The Creation Sin and Destruction Monk
by EiriFllyn
Summary: Ichigo gets splintered memories of a future where Ichibei made him the new Soul King. He starts to learn about Soul Society greatest sin and now he's not going to play by anyone's script. Starts before Rukia rescue arc. Quincy!Ichigo, AU elements.
1. Chapter 1

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**1 - Death and Strawberry**

"_Ichigo…my son…I'm sorry…" The body of a man covered in dark substance disintegrated with a final whisper along the broken pieces of Zangetsu._

_His face was frozen in shock, but his divine eyes with four irises gazed upon him with endless pity, before his reiatsu and body completely disappeared, engulfed by the blast of Getsuga Tenshou. _

"…but not you…even if…rewrite…"_ The voice of the dying man fluttered in the wind, even as _white light engulfed everything.

Images flashed through Ichigo's mind, splintered memories of another time, another life, another world.

O O O

_Five men surrounded him with artifacts of great power. _

_One mirror sword forged by himself with his own soul's power, entrusted to his subordinate, now stabbed into his heart._

"_You will be the lynchpin, Spirit King-sama."_

_His body was sealed. _

_His eyes were covered._

_His limbs were torn._

_His brain was extracted._

_His heart was shattered._

_His broken remnant was enshrined and the other pieces scattered._

_A ritual was performed and his soul and the world was split with the power of the __**Almighty**__._

_One became three, connected only by a precipice and a void of chaotic nothing._

_The sleeping god dreamed a million years bound in the chains of fate, his agony masked by the illusion of undeath._

O O O

_The grinning face of a bald man covered his vision._

"_Rejoice, Ichigo! You have saved the world. The Great Families have all agreed that you deserve to be the new Spirit King," he said jovially, raising his arms in a grand gesture._

_Ichigo shook in a mad frenzy, and tried to say something back, but found himself unable._

_His body had been covered in seals, his limbs were each nailed to the end of a five pointed cross._

_A sword of mirrors was stabbed into his heart._

_Then all he knew was unimaginable pain._

An unearthly scream erupted from his lungs.

O O O

"_**UraHarRa KIsUKe**__!" The man in white crystalline robes with lights piercing his chest and neck screamed. "You possess such a great intellect, why do you not act?! How can you let yourself be ruled by a thing like that?!" His black sclera made him look insane, but if there were another three irises if would look no different than the eyes of the man who called Ichigo son._

"_A thing like that? You mean the Spirit King?" The man named Urahara Kisuke replied calmly. "I see. So you've seen it. Without the Spirit King's existence, Soul Society would be rent asunder. The 'Spirit King' is the 'lynchpin'. If that lynchpin is lost, then things would simply crumble away."_

_His words did little to calm down the man who was now increasingly engulfed in spears of light._

"_That's just the way the world is," Urahara said with finality._

O O O

_He watched helplessly as she walked away with the two soul reapers._

"_Don't move! Don't…even try…to move one step from there!" Rukia stood before him with her back to him._

"_R-rukia…!" He managed to get out._

"_If you try to follow me…" she turned to face him with tearful eyes. "I'll never forgive you! You're going to die anyway, so conserve your energy and try to linger on just a little longer…"_

_When they finally went through the Senkaimon, he felt his fingers clench and his whole body shake with rage and despair._

'_Why…?'_

_He had come to protect her, yet once again, it was him who was helped._

"_Hah…ah…ARGHHH!"_

_An unearthly scream erupted from his lungs._

"Ichigo! Ichigo! What's wrong?!" Gentle but strong hands held him as a familiar voice entered his ears.

His eyes flew open as he grabbed onto those hands.

The face of his saviour looked back at him with deep worry.

"Rukia…Rukia!" He whispered loudly as he couldn't believe his sight, and pulled her into a desperate hug.

Rukia was shocked, but hearing him call out her name repeatedly in broken sobs, she could only hold him tightly to give him comfort.

"It's alright…I'm here, Ichigo," she whispered softly in return.

"You can't leave…you absolutely can't! No matter what…I won't let them take you!"

The words coming out of his mouth sent a jolt of alarm down her spine.

"W-what? I'm not going anywhere, Ichigo. It was just a nightmare, everything will be alright," She mumbled back. Inside, she was panicking. Did Ichigo figure out why that Onmitsukudo member was here earlier that day?

The minutes passed, with only Ichigo's heavy breathing and shaking to break the silence.

The images that flashed through Ichigo's mind were so vivid, so real, it felt like he had lived them personally, even though there was no way that could be possible, because he remembered the events before he went to sleep even more clearly.

He knew without a doubt that it had been his mother's death anniversary, and he had fought Grand Fisher after finding out that his mother's death wasn't natural after all.

The memories of the future were growing further away as if it was all just a dream, with the memories farthest into the future disappearing until only bits and pieces were left.

But within the haze, there were memories that were seared into his mind as if the memory was alive, refusing to let him forget.

The man with the divine eyes. Zangetsu, his zanpaktou. The Spirit King, and the horrifying ritual they did to him. The grinning chief of the Zero Division. Aizen Sosuke and the Hougyoku.

The closer memories of Rukia and the invasion of Soul Society and Hueco Mundo were much stronger, and he desperately clung onto them just as he clung onto her.

He didn't understand what he had seen, but it felt so real he couldn't dismiss them as just dreams.

If they truly were of the future, then he needed to remember.

He needed that knowledge.

That strength.

To prepare and protect.

"Ichigo, are you alright now?" Rukia's voice took him out of his rushing thoughts.

He slowly detached himself from her, and stared as if trying to confirm that she was real.

"Yeah…I think I'm fine now. Thanks, Rukia," he said with a cracking voice.

"Idiot, it's obvious that you're not! You almost woke up your whole family with that scream!" Rukia said with a frown.

"If it was obvious, then why'd you ask me, midget!"

She smiled as her eyes softened. "That's better."

Ichigo huffed, but there was no real anger behind it.

"Hey Ichigo, you know I'll listen if you want to talk about it," she said with uncharacteristic gentleness.

Her eyes met his again, but they looked troubled, as if he was struggling to decide.

"It was nothing…just a bad nightmare. It doesn't matter, I won't let something like that happen," he said, his voice gaining strength at the end.

Rukia gave him a long look. "It sounded like more than just any normal nightmare. I could feel your spirit pressure going wild. You didn't wake up either when I tried to snap you out of it."

He wanted to share everything with her, but he didn't want to burden her with all that knowledge just yet.

There was so much pain, so much suffering, and he didn't even understand it fully yet.

But was it really the future? How could he check?

"I…Rukia. When was the last time you were supposed to report back to Soul Society?"

He saw her freeze at his words, exposing that which she wanted to hide from him.

"I…don't have to report back yet," she said stiffly. "Not for another month."

"Rukia, please. I'm not that stupid. That guy from today…he said you committed a serious crime. That's why he was trying to take you back," Ichigo said with a fierce expression, hands gripped tightly onto her shoulders.

"Wh-what are you talking about? He was just messing with me. He left us alone in the end, didn't he?"

"It's against the law to give your powers to a human, isn't it? It's considered treason, and the penalty is death."

Her eyes widened as she whispered weakly. "How did you know that?"

"I saw it in a dream," he said. "I don't know how or why…but it was so real. Your brother came with his vice-captain to take you back. Kuchiki Byakuya and Abarai Renji."

Rukia gasped and looked at him with complete disbelief. "T-that's impossible! How can you know those names?"

"I defeated Renji even after he released Zabimaru, but Byakuya got me. He destroyed my Saketsu and Hakusui, removing my Shinigami powers. In the end…you went with them to keep me alive just a little longer." His hands were shaking again, their iron grip digging into Rukia's skin.

"Ichigo…"

"It happened one month from now. But I'm not going to let them take you! I'll train and get strong enough to defeat them!"

"Ichigo, you can't…it's impossible. There's no way you can get strong enough to defeat a captain in such a short time. And even if you did, it wouldn't end there. They'll just send more. Just forget about me and hide yourself. If you don't try to fight them, they won't be able to find you," Rukia said, tears welling already in her eyes.

"Shut up! I don't care! There's no way I'm going to just let you die. It doesn't matter how many people they send. Even if I have to fight all of Soul Society, I'm going to save you!"

There was a long moment of silence, before Rukia gave him a smile, and pushed his hands off of her. "Thank you, Ichigo. If you're sure about this, then we have a lot of training ahead. You should get some sleep."

Ichigo nodded. "I am sure."

Then she stood up and turned around, only for Ichigo's hand to grab onto her wrist and pull her back hard.

"Wh-what?!"

She yelped as she fell backwards into his embrace.

"You think you can fool me with that creepy fake smile? You're planning to run off by yourself and turn yourself in as soon as I fall asleep, aren't you? That's what you did in my dream. I'm not going to fall for that again." He pulled her down onto the bed with him, and kept his arms wrapped around her.

She turned her head with a glare that showed her angry red face. "You idiot! What do you think you're doing?"

"You're going to sleep right here, where I can be sure you aren't going anywhere," he said glaring back.

She huffed and turned back around, facing away from him, but she stopped struggling. "Fine. Idiot."

The two of them were still for a long time, but Ichigo had too many thoughts on his mind to go to sleep.

He kept his eyes open, looking at the back of Rukia's head, trying to process everything he saw in his dreams.

Everything up to the end of somewhere around the end of the year was still fresh in his mind, but the memories from after he lost his Shinigami powers with the Final Getsuga Tenshou were hazy and barely comprehensible.

He remembered bits and pieces of some other kind of power he learned before he regained his Shinigami powers, then a war involving Quincies, but it was extremely confusing. How could there even be a war with Quincies when Ishida was the last one?

Eventually, he gave up trying to remember the visions that far into the future, and focused back on Rukia and what was coming in the next few months.

He whispered again to Rukia. "That wasn't the only thing I saw in my dreams, you know? I _did_ save you, even though I had to break into Seireitei to do it. You think it's impossible, but I learned Shikai in just ten days before the break-in, then I learned Bankai in two and a half days just in time to stop your execution. I even beat Byakuya the second time I met him. He didn't believe it either, and thought I was faking my Bankai, but I beat him even when he was using Senbonzakura Kageyoshi. That's how I strong I got. And now that I've seen my Bankai in my dreams, I'm pretty sure I'll achieve it even faster."

There was another long silence. Ichigo thought Rukia might have fallen asleep, but then suddenly she responded with a whisper.

"That's ridiculous…but if it's you, with that ridiculously huge zanpaktou, maybe you can do it…"

"I can. So just shut up and let me protect you."

Satisfied, Ichigo shut his eyes.

O O O

A city of skyscrapers, jutting sideways.

A familiar scene, even though he had never been here before.

A familiar man, standing on a flagpole, was waiting for him.

Dressed in a dark cloak and wearing sunglasses, the spirit looked at him with assessing eyes.

"Ichigo…? How…?"

"Old Man Zangetsu!" He shouted with a mixture of disbelief and relief. "I knew it! They weren't just dreams!"

"Dreams?" Zangetsu titled his head quizzically. "And what did you call me?"

Ichigo was taken aback at his reaction. "You…you don't remember?"

"I don't know what you mean, Ichigo. You shouldn't be able to see me, let alone know that name."

"What? Why? You're my zanpaktou spirit! Why wouldn't I be able to see you?"

A sharp feminine voice came from behind him. "Because you've been using _me_ all this time, Ichigo."

He turned around with widened eyes.

A woman in a white dress floated in the air.

Beautiful silver hair draped down from her head, a large ribbon in the shape of wings was on her back, with smaller thin ribbons floating around as if dancing in the wind. But there was a blur to her features, as if he couldn't fully see her.

Even so, he could tell.

It was the most beautiful zanpaktou spirit he'd ever laid eyes on.


	2. Chapter 2

**2 – Black and White**

Then his thoughts caught up to him.

The most beautiful zanpaktou spirit he had ever seen? When had he seen a zanpaktou spirit other than Zangetsu?

Despite feeling as if he should know the woman in front of him, he couldn't recall ever meeting her before.

"Who are you…?" He asked.

"Hm…my name is…" Her words trailed off into an indistinct sound he couldn't hear.

"I can't hear you. It's just like with Zangetsu before I achieved shikai...but I don't understand. I thought Zangetsu was my zanpaktou spirit!" He glanced back at the cloaked man behind him.

Zangetsu jumped over and landed in front of him.

"Zangetsu…that name doesn't belong to me yet, Ichigo."

The cryptic words confused him even more. Were his dreams actually wrong? It wasn't the future?

"That doesn't make any sense! It's the name you told me yourself! We achieved shikai and even bankai together!"

The zanpaktou spirit of his dreams merely shook his head. "Not with me, you haven't. The possibility exists, but it is only that: A possibility. Right now, she is your zanpaktou spirit." He glanced towards the woman in the air.

Ichigo looked lost and a silence filled the air. He stared back towards the blurry woman, unspoken questions evident on his face.

"I thought you were supposed to be quite intelligent. Aren't you at the top of your class without even trying?" She floated down gently to the building they were on. "Who gave you your Shinigami powers, Ichigo?"

Who gave him his powers? A sudden realization came over him.

"You're Rukia's zanpaktou spirit? Sode no Shirayuki?"

And with his declaration of her name, her features came into full clarity, her sheer beauty taking his breath away.

Her silver eyes blinked with a deep curiosity before she floated forward, leaning towards his face as she grabbed his chin.

The touch sent a shiver of cold through his skin, but it was a pleasant chill like eating ice cream on a hot summer day.

Behind them, Zangetsu held out a finger to catch a falling white flake. "Oh? It's snowing…better than the rain, I suppose."

"You're a strange one, strawberry-kun. You couldn't hear it, but you already knew my name. Did you learn it in the future? That's what you were dreaming about, right?"

"A-ah. Yeah," he said, barely getting a hold of his nerves at the close proximity to such a beautiful woman. "I saw Rukia releasing your shikai."

"How intriguing. There must be something to these dreams then." She retracted her hand. Then she turned to face the spirit who claimed not to be Zangetsu.

"And you. You sound like you might know something about this. I didn't think Zanpaktou spirits could have a form before they had a name. And if you aren't this 'Zangetsu' yet, then why do _you_ know that name, whatever you are?"

There was a pause before not-Zangetsu answered.

"You could say that I am one part of Zangetsu. The other part has not yet awakened—there is a strong spirit pressure suppressing it. As for Ichigo's dreams, I have only suspicions. That power, perhaps…but it doesn't quite fit."

Ichigo started to speak as Zangetsu trailed off in thought. "Old Man Zangetsu—"

"Do not call me that, Ichigo. Until that possibility becomes fixed, that name is not mine to use, and calling me by that name will only limit your potential. For now, you may call me Gesshokuro."

The new named rolled off Ichigo's tongue as he tested it. "Gesshokuro…got it. Okay, Old man Gesshokuro, what power are you talking about?"

"In your visions, did you not see what I represent in you?" Gesshokuro asked in return without answering.

"Huh?" Then it hit him. "That man! You look just like that man, except for the creepy eyes! He called me his son in that dream, but I don't remember anything about why we were fighting or where he came from. Unless that _was_ you, materialized? You broke when we fought against him…although come to think of it, your sword form looked weird too."

An inscrutable expression flitted across Gesshokuro's face.

"Curious. If it really is the power of **Almighty,** it has expressed itself in an unusual way."

Ichigo couldn't make any sense of what Gesshokuro had said but the word **Almighty** sent another shock through his soul.

"The **Almighty**…the Spirit King…!" He muttered as the memory surfaced unwillingly. "Is that why they chose me?"

This time the unflappable Gesshokuro's eyes widened.

"Ichigo…" a soft whisper escaped his lips as his face turned to pity, an expression just like the one Ichigo had seen on that man. "So I couldn't protect you after all. I'm sorry…"

"The hell you talking about, Old Man? You were with me every step of the way! We've been fighting together in every battle after Byakuya destroyed my powers when Rukia was taken away. I would be nothing without you! Whatever the heck that vision was, I _know_ it wasn't your fault, so stop blaming yourself!"

"Is that so…?" Gesshokuro looked confused, as if he couldn't understand why he would have done the things Ichigo described.

"What are you speaking of, Mister Gesshokuro? What is the Almighty?" Sode no Shirayuki asked.

Zangetsu hesitated as he assessed her, then turned his gaze back on Ichigo with a solemn look.

Ichigo found comfort in that familiar expression, a pillar of strength that always knew what to do.

"Ichigo, do you wish for her to hear this?"

"I don't mind. Rukia's the one who saved my life and gave me the power to do what I've wanted to do. To protect. She's my friend, so her Zanpaktou is too."

Sode no Shirayuki's expression didn't change, but somehow he could feel that she was pleased by his answer.

"Very well." Gesshokuro's sunglasses flashed as he closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he held out a hand.

"First, you must understand that I am not primarily a Zanpaktou spirit. I am the manifestation of his Quincy powers."

The explanation seemed to be directed towards Sode no Shirayuki, as if Gesshokuro expected Ichigo to know already.

Reishi gathered from the air, and quickly condensed into a spirit bow in Gesshokuro's hand.

"I have Quincy powers?" Ichigo said incredulously. The scene looked somehow familiar, despite his disbelief. As if it reminded him of something in his visions, but the memory was already mostly faded.

A vision of a white version of himself—his inner hollow, another of a Shinigami explaining how Asauchi blades—the blank swords that turned into a Shinigami's Zanpaktou—were made with the dead souls of many Shinigami, and a disappearing Gesshokuro.

Gesshokuro turned sharply to him at his outcry.

"So you never learned the Quincy arts in the futures you saw," Gesshokuro said. A flash of guilt crossed his face. "Then what you meant was…I see."

"What's with that look, Gesshokuro? What are you thinking now?"

"I'm sorry, Ichigo. I believe I have done you a great wrong. If I never taught you the Quincy arts, you must have fought with Shinigami powers and believed that I represented them."

The last sentence threw Ichigo for a loop. It was as if Gesshokuro was saying he _wasn't_ the source of all his Shinigami powers.

"What? But that's…impossible," he said. "You're saying you're _not_ the source of my Shinigami powers? But you're my zanpaktou! We achieved Shikai and even Bankai together!"

"I'm afraid I must have lied to you, Ichigo, if that is what you believe. I am only one part of Zangetsu, and a connection with only me is not enough to achieve your true Shikai or Bankai. It would be similar to the effect of using the wrong name for your release. If you believed that I alone was Zangetsu, you would achieve only a fraction of the true power of the release."

A terrible sense of loss hit him then, and an inexplicable feeling of fear arose.

The scene of Old Man Zangetsu disappearing replayed over and over in his mind, becoming clearer and clearer.

He realized that in the vision, the old man had been saying goodbye, and was disappearing because he thought wasn't needed anymore.

_No! That's not true!_

"Look, I don't get what you're saying but that doesn't matter! You said it yourself, right? You _are_ Zangetsu! Even if you're only one part, you're still my Zanpaktou! So what if you didn't teach me the Quincy arts in my visions? None of that even happened yet! It's all in the future, one that I'm going to change anyway! We're here, in the now, and you told me the truth just now! That's good enough for me. So stop beating yourself up over something that hasn't even happened yet!"

Zangetsu looked stunned, but soon he smiled in a rare display. "I see. Thank you, Ichigo."

"You're the strangest Zanpaktou I've ever met," said Sode no Shirayuki.

"So what's up with this Almighty thing anyway?" Ichigo asked.

"Eyes which can see the future are the mark of a true Quincy. That is all I know of it, from the memory of your Quincy blood. But it is strange…if you had used that power, as the manifestation of your Quincy powers I should have sensed your use of it. Yet, I did not notice."

"Then maybe it's something else?"

"Hm…"

"Wait, if you're my Quincy powers, then who was that man I saw that looked like you? Was he related to the Quincy?"

"The one you saw must have been Yhwach, the one whom all Quincy are descended from, whom all Quincy inherit their powers from. That is why I look like him. He was the Quincy king a thousand years ago, and the son of the Spirit King. Both of them wielded the **Almighty**."

"1000 years ago? But if I saw him in the future…does that mean he's still alive?"

"There was a great war a thousand years ago between the Quincy and the Shinigami. The Quincy lost, and Yhwach died. If he somehow revives himself in the future, I do not know how, though perhaps I should not be surprised that a wielder of the **Almighty** can revive himself, considering that the Spirit King is not fully dead even in that state…" The spirit mused as if speaking to himself.

Ichigo grimaced at Zangetsu's explanation. There was a whole lot more about the Spirit King and Soul Society that he saw in those visions, but he was trying very hard not to think about it. If he thought about it, it would lead to that horrifying experience of being forced into becoming the new Spirit King and _being mutilated and cut into pieces_—

"Ichigo!" Zangetsu's strong voice and hand shook him free of his spiraling thoughts. He realized he was hyperventilating and struggled to bring his breathing back to normal.

"Perhaps it is best if you returned to proper sleep, Ichigo. You can return here at any time. But right now, your mind needs rest from what you have experienced," said Zangetsu.

Before he could protest, his Inner World faded away and all was dark.

_The next morning…_

He woke up to Rukia's voice again.

"Ichigo! Let go of me before your dad comes to wake you up!" She struggled in his arms as he opened his eyes groggily.

"Alright, alright…"

A certain stuffed animal jumped onto them. "Eehh? Ichigo you bastard! When did you get so close to Rukia Nee-chan?!"

Rukia's palm came up and slapped him away.

"Omphf!" He smacked into the ground and bounced a few times before coming to a stop.

"Shut up and behave, Kon. You can have my body today, don't make me regret stopping Urahara from disposing of you," said Ichigo as he got up and stretched.

"Huh? You're being suspiciously nice today…" The stuffed animal with a mod soul inside it picked itself up, narrowed its eyes and held its chin in an exaggerated pose.

_An hour later on the southern outskirts of town…_

"This should be far enough," said Ichigo as he glanced around. They stood at the edge of Karasu river as it ran through the forested mountains on the south side of Karakura town.

Nobody else was here, and Ichigo couldn't sense any spiritual beings either.

In her gigai wearing a casual dress, Rukia stood a short ways behind him, catching her breath.

"You okay?" Ichigo asked.

"I'm fine. So let's talk. What's your plan, if you weren't just talking crazy last night, o' great prophet?" She crossed her arms and looked at him expectantly.

"I was going to start by training my shikai and bankai, but I did Jinzen and found out a few things last night." He drew out his huge sword from his back.

Rukia raised an eyebrow. "Jinzen…another thing you can't possibly know…so what did you find out?"

"This sword isn't actually mine. This is Sode no Shirayuki," Ichigo said, observing his sword closely.

Rukia's eyes bugged out and looked at the huge sword with a hint of hurt. "Wha—you learned the name of my zanpaktou?!"

"Calm down. She's not the one that told me. I just saw you releasing in my visions. And I'm pretty sure I can't release her shikai. That's actually the problem. Since I'm using your Shinigami powers, I can't train my own yet. I need to transfer her back into you…somehow."

The currently powerless Shinigami felt relieved that Sode no Shirayuki hadn't decided to leave her.

She had been getting worried, with her powers over the last month not recovering as they should have.

"As far as I know, the only way to do that is that same way I transferred it to you…but it takes very skilled spirit pressure control, and it can only be done when the Shinigami has achieved shikai. If you can't release her shikai, then it'd be impossible," she said.

Ichigo scrunched his eyes. "Seriously? But weren't you supposed to recover your powers naturally? How does that work, if we can't transfer it back unless I achieve shikai, which is obviously impossible because it's your zanpaktou?"

"I _am_ supposed to recover my powers naturally. A normal human can't host Shinigami powers for long. They would disappear on their own and return to me. But your powers are getting stronger, not weaker, while mine are getting weaker instead. And you weren't supposed to take almost all my powers either, only a small portion. I wasn't supposed to lose Sode no Shirayuki in the first place," she said, clearly annoyed.

"I know why you aren't getting your powers back. Looks like this might be harder than I thought." He sighed, moving a hand through his hair.

"You know why? Then why aren't you telling me?" Rukia glared at him.

"Hold your horses, I was just getting to that. It's because that bastard hat 'n' clogs gave you a spirit pressure draining gigai instead of a normal one. If you stay in it too long, you'll turn into a human."

"What? Why would he do that to me?!"


	3. Chapter 3

**3 – Black and White 2**

Ichigo couldn't stand seeing the hurt and anguished look on Rukia's face. He knew exactly how she felt after seeing that vision of himself getting betrayed by the higher ups in Soul Society.

She deserved the full truth.

"A long time ago, he created an artifact that can break down the barrier between Shinigami and Hollow, basically Hollowfying Shinigami and Shinigamifying Hollows, for the purpose of increasing the soul's strength beyond the normal limits of pure Shinigami or Hollow souls. He called it the Hougyoku, and at some point he tried to destroy it, but couldn't, so he decided to hide it, specifically using a soul to mask the Hougyoku's own energy signature. He chose your soul to be the vessel. By turning you into a normal human soul without spirit pressure, the Hougyoku would become dormant and stay that way forever, or so he'd hoped."

"Hollowfying Shinigami?" Rukia asked with horror. "Can it really do that?"

"Yes, it can. I've seen the effects," Ichigo said with a grimace.

"Damn it…I knew he had ulterior motives for approaching me that night I transferred my powers to you. A stranger so conveniently offering a gigai to me for free…but I chalked it up to being a ploy to get me to buy things in the future," She clenched her fists. "Just who is he?"

"He's a former Captain that was exiled. 12th division, I think. He's got a black cat with him that's actually the former Captain of the 2nd division in disguise too, Shihoin Yoruichi. Same with that big guy, Tessai something or other, too, but I don't remember what division."

"Shihoin? That's one of the great Noble Families. Their crimes would have to be extremely severe for a captain and member of the great Noble Families to get exiled," said Rukia.

"Oh yeah, she was. And they were exiled for hollowfication experiments that got a bunch of other captains and vice-captains hollowfied. Those guys are hiding in Karakura town too, they call themselves Visored. But they said it wasn't Urahara that did it, it was Aizen who framed him."

"Aizen?! You mean Captain Aizen of the fifth division?" Rukia was shocked again. She had heard plenty about the friendly Captain of the fifth, and a number of her fellow Shinigami seemed to idolize him.

"That's right. He's secretly a traitor to Soul Society, and the one behind the conspiracy to have you executed," Ichigo said, anger filling his expression. "He knows all about the Hougyoku, and according to him, he orchestrated _everything_. He's the one that assigned you to this mission in Karakura, the one who sent those hollows after my family so that you would transfer your powers to me, and who manipulates Central 46 into ordering your execution by the Sokyoku, because only the Sokyoku can vaporize your soul completely and release the Hougyoku inside. I don't know if he was just bullshitting and taking credit for everything, but his Zanpaktou's shikai power is insane. Anything who sees his shikai release can be put under complete hypnosis of all five senses, and he was able to pretend to be Central 46 issuing new orders after he killed them all."

"That is..! That's a lot to take in…" The first inklings of doubt appeared on her face.

"Rukia, I know it sounds crazy, but it's all true. Aizen tricked everyone! You have to believe me!" Ichigo told her with a pleading face.

"I do believe you Ichigo…but…there's something I don't understand. It's not what you said about Captain Aizen, it's Urahara," she said, frowning.

"What is it?"

"If Captain Aizen really did send me on this mission and arrange for those Hollows to attack you just so I would transfer my powers to you, then did he predict that Urahara would put the Hougyoku inside of me? Doesn't that seem a little ridiculous?" said Rukia.

"I guess, but it's Aizen," Ichigo said, shrugging.

"If Urahara really wanted to hide the Hougyoku, he could have done it with anyone. Why me? When he gave me that gigai, I was already barely more than a spiritually aware human soul. So if he put the Hougyoku in me then, he could have just as easily put it in any other spiritually aware human soul. There's no shortage of those in Karakura town, let alone the whole world, and there are ways to drain spirit pressure with seals instead of gigai. They would live their lives actually being humans, without the risk of a former Shinigami like me being tracked down by Soul Society."

"Huh? You're right…"

"Even if he needed a soul with Shinigami powers, I was a terrible choice. By choosing me, it would actually attract _more_ attention, because I'm also part of the Kuchiki clan, a Great Noble Family. For example, you said Nii-sama came to take me back, but why would a Captain and vice-captain be sent to arrest a mere unseated Shinigami? It's because I'm the sister to the head of the Kuchiki clan. Otherwise, normally it should be the Executive Militia of the Onmitsukidou sent to apprehend criminals, like Saido Eikichiro."

Ichigo's eyes widened as Rukia's words gave him goosebumps. Something was very wrong with the explanation he'd been given in his dreams, but what was it?

Rukia stated her own verdict.

"I don't think Urahara's trying to hide the Hougyoku at all. I think he's using me as _bait_, to lure out Captain Aizen and expose him in front of all the other Captains in a public execution. Once the Hougyoku is revealed when the Sokyoku destroys my body, he'd have no choice but to expose himself or risk losing his only window to take it before Soul Society locks it away."

"Shit! That actually…makes a lot of sense. That bastard lied to me even when he apologized! Fuck!"

Ichigo grinded his teeth as his anger rose.

Rukia held her arms at the elbows and looked down in thought. "Before I left Soul Society, 3rd seat Kiyone-san mentioned a trip we had gone on to the human world back when I was her assistant. But I don't remember it at all…I didn't think anything of it at the time, but if what you're telling me is right, I think Urahara might have planted the Hougyoku inside me then and erased my memories, hoping to use me to bait Aizen even back then, because otherwise there's no way that sending me back as a Shinigami to Soul Society with the active Hougyoku could be considered hiding. That would explain why Captain Aizen sent me on this mission. He didn't predict what Urahara would do. He already knew that the Hougyoku was inside me, had years to analyze me and realize that only the Sokyoku could extract the Hougyoku, then created a plan to have me executed, all according to Urahara's own plan."

"That bastard…all that time…he really was just using us!" He kicked a pebble to relieve some of the frustration. "We can't trust him anymore. You getting captured might be part of his plans. There's no way I'll let that happen. If Aizen already knows then it's way too risky to let you go back. He eventually finds a way to extract the Hougyoku even without the Sokyoku."

"Then…what can we do? You can't honestly be thinking of fighting all of Soul Society?"

"Damn it! I thought hat 'n' clogs was shady, but this is on a whole different level. If he was helping us, then we'd have a chance. But now…I don't know. I'm not even sure if the Visoreds will help us if we don't work with Urahara. Fucking hell, they might even be in on the whole thing! They'd want to expose Aizen and clear their own names too…"

Rukia looked at him sorrowfully, then, as if making a decision, she put on a reassuring smile. "Ichigo…it's okay. You told me you saved me in the end, right? I won't die. You can just let things happen as they did in your visions. Let Nii-sama take me. I don't mind being imprisoned for a little while."

Ichigo shouted defiantly. "No! You don't understand, you were _one second_ away from being vaporized, and again barely survived when Aizen tried to kill you! If anything delayed me the tiniest bit, if Byakuya was too injured after our fight to do anything, if they moved up the execution even sooner, you'd be dead! Not to mention any number of other things that could go wrong! I _won't take that risk_!"

Rukia fell silent at that.

"I need to think," Ichigo said. "There's gotta be a way out of this. We need to expose Aizen some other way. I need to get strong enough to make it not worth it for Soul Society to come after us. They left Urahara, Yoruichi and the Visoreds alone, and their accused crime is more serious than ours. It must be because they have so many Captain level fighters and would cause too much damage if they fought. If we had that kind of strength…"

He paced around thinking furiously. "Shit, if only I had more time. Next month is too soon!"

Then he stopped and blinked. "That's right! What we need right now is to buy time! If you get your powers back, they might delay arrest orders if they don't have enough evidence! They also have to find you first. If I don't have that competition with Ishida and fight the Menos, they might not be able to find you in your untraceable gigai."

Rukia still looked worried. "But we can't ask Urahara for another gigai or he'll know something's up, and you can't transfer my powers back to me the way I did to you. It drains spirit pressure just to stay in spirit form on the human world, so it's impossible recover like that. And what about Saido? I've still been in the human world long enough for them to send him, so they're already suspicious."

"Wait, what exactly would he have reported back, anyway? Isn't he technically assisting in treason by leaving us alone?"

Rukia's face gained a tint of red. "It's not a big deal if I just overstay my mission time in the human world. As long as I don't have a new mission assigned and Captain Ukitake doesn't order me back, it's just a minor offense that the division handles in-house. It's only treason if I transferred my powers to a human."

Ichigo looked at her strangely. "Even if he doesn't mention seeing me with Shinigami powers, they won't think it's a crime that you refused to go back with him, or defeated him to escape?"

"W-well, I don't think that's what he reported."

"Then how would he explain leaving us alone to his higher ups?"

"He implied that he was going to report that I was using a gigai f-for p-pleasure with you."

Ichigo's face reddened to match Rukia's. "Th-the hell?"

"It's an explanation that's not a serious crime and out of Onmitsukido's jurisdiction, so he wouldn't have to take me back." She turned away from him.

"Fuck! No wonder Byakuya and Renji were so pissed off at me."

After a long and awkward silence, Ichigo seemed to light up with an idea.

"Hey, that means if they don't find out about me having Shinigami powers, this can work! You just need to get your powers back, and I have to hide my Shinigami powers. If we can buy even one more month…"

"But how are we going to do that?"

"Hold on a sec."

Ichigo focused his thoughts inward and towards his zanpaktou. 'Hey, old man Zangetsu, Sode no Shirayuki, can you guys hear me?'

'_I can hear you, Ichigo, but I told you not to call me that_,' the spirit of his Quincy powers answered. '_You will weaken yourself by doing so._'

'Ah…sorry, Gesshokuro_._'

'_Your bond with Sode no Shirayuki is not strong enough for you to hear her like this, but rest assured she can hear you_.'

'OK. So I just had an idea. If my zanpaktou is actually Sode no Shirayuki, can I give her back by handing her sword form over to Rukia?'

"What am I waiting for? What are you doing, Ichigo?" Rukia asked.

"Just checking something," he said.

A short while later, Gesshokuro responded. '_Sode no Shirayuki believes that could work, if Rukia can release her shikai and reseal her._'

"Alright, Rukia, Sode no Shirayuki says that you can take her back by releasing her shikai then resealing her," Ichigo announced.

"You can talk to her without Jinzen?" Rukia asked with surprise.

"No, but I've got someone to relay messages," he said with a smirk. "Anyways, you gonna try it?"

He put his sword in the ground in between them.

"But I don't have enough spirit pressure to release her shikai now," said Rukia.

"Well if it's spirit pressure you need…" Ichigo said, walking forward.

Then he kneeled down and put his sword hand forward, pressing where Rukia's heart would be, and used the other to hold on to her shoulder.

Rukia's eyes widened and her hand flew up to grab his. "Wait, you can't just push spirit pressure into someone else—"

Spirit pressure poured out of Ichigo as his whole body glowed with power, then all of it was forced into his hand and through to Rukia.

The former Shinigami gasped as the energy flooded into her. "S-stop this, Ichigo!"

"Don't worry, Rukia, I learned from Captain Unohana about how healing Kido works. Just restoring the other person's spirit pressure with your own," said Ichigo.

"Yo-you fool, that's not h-how—"

There was a burning sensation all over her body, and she thought for a moment that she was going to die from Ichigo's idiocy.

Healing Kido was about restoring the other person's spirit energy in order to help them raise their own spirit pressure levels, not directly transferring spirit pressure. Forcing activated spirit pressure into someone else was more likely to destroy them than do anything to help.

Then, just as suddenly, it was like 'something' broke through into her soul, and suddenly she felt her own spirit energy rising rapidly, as that 'something' filled a void she didn't realize existed.

"Ah!" She screamed as her spirit pressure skyrocketed, easily returning to her previous levels before losing her powers, then rose even further.

It wasn't long before her body was brimming so full of energy that Rukia felt as if she was in a shikai release.

When it reached a certain threshold, her body began emitting a white light that engulfed the whole area and Ichigo was forced back by a strong wave of spirit pressure and had to cover his eyes to avoid being blinded.

When the light died down, there was a set of brilliant white wings of pure energy on Rukia's back that appeared momentarily before flickering and breaking into snow flakes and fading away into nothing.

Once it was over and they could both see again, Rukia slammed a fist into Ichigo's gut, eliciting a pained groan.

"You damned idiot, that could have killed me! It's not possible to just transfer spirit pressure into someone else like that! You completely misunderstood what healing Kido does!"

"But it worked, didn't it? I can feel your spirit pressure rose a lot," Ichigo said, clutching his stomach.

She frowned but concentrated on leaving her gigai. Unlike an actual living human, she didn't need any artificial technology to force her soul out.

Except, it didn't work.

Try as she might, she couldn't break the connection with the gigai.

Her face paled as she felt panic rising.

Ichigo seemed to notice as he asked, "What's wrong?"

"I c-can't leave my gigai! We were too late, I've already turned into a human!"


	4. Chapter 4

**4 – Black and White 3**

"Calm down, there must be another explanation. I can feel your spirit pressure is much higher than before, and you can obviously see me in spirit form. How about using the glove?" Ichigo suggested.

Rukia considered his words and realized that she could also feel her own spirit energy was much higher than before.

She took out the soul capture glove and gave it to Ichigo, who put it on and pushed Rukia.

With a jolt, her soul was ejected, and she found herself in black Shinigami robes again instead of the white yukata she was in after losing most of her powers.

"It actually worked…?" She murmured with a mixture of joy and shock, inspecting herself.

"Now you can take back Sode no Shirayuki." Ichigo gestured to the huge blade that was stuck into the ground.

Rukia looked suspiciously at the blade as she pulled it out. It was much taller than she was and cumbersome to move. "Is this really Sode no Shirayuki?"

"Beats me. She said I was using her powers, so what else could it be? Anyways, it's worth a try, right?"

She couldn't see the fault in that logic, so she took a stance and gathered her newly recovered spirit pressure, channeling it into the sword.

"Dance, Sode no Shirayuki!"

An explosion of white spirit pressure with black outlines burst from her position, and Ichigo was blown away several metres and fell to the ground.

"Holy shit!" He swore as he got back to his feet.

When the wind cleared and he could see without it buffeting his eyes, Rukia's shikai release was before him in all its glory, just as he remembered.

A thin blade of pure white, emanating an aura of sheer cold.

Rukia observed it closely and ran a finger along its length. "Sode no Shirayuki…it's good to have you back."

Then she noticed something strange. At the end of its hilt, there were now two ribbons instead of the single white ribbon that should have been there.

A new ribbon of pure black had appeared.

"What the…Ichigo! Look what you've done! You've tainted her! This wasn't here before!"

She thrust out the end of her sword towards Ichigo and pointed at the black ribbon, then her eyes widened in shock as stared at Ichigo. "Ichigo…you…"

"Huh?"

Ichigo glanced down at himself in confusion, then a similar look of shock appeared on his face.

Instead of the traditional Shinigami loose shihakusho robes, he was now wearing a form-fitting white dress shirt, tight black pants, and a black cloak with a high collar and jagged edges.

"What the hell is this? Why'd my uniform change?" He asked aloud as he stared at himself, brushing aside the cloak to inspect his clothes.

Then his eyes found the conspicuous silver object hanging on his left wrist.

His new clothes looked almost exactly like what Old Man Gesshokuro wore, and a silver five-pointed cross with a hole in the centre was attached to a chained wristlet wrapped around his left wrist.

Rukia noticed what he was staring at. "That looks like…"

"Wait a moment, I'm going to ask Gesshokuro what's going on."

"Gesshokuro, that must be the name of your Zanpaktou, right?" Rukia understood what he meant and nodded.

"Ah…kind of. Long story."

Ichigo sat down and closed his eyes, then when he reopened them, he was in his Inner World, facing Gesshokuro.

"What's going on, old man Gesshokuro? Why do I look like this all of a sudden?"

"Shinigami powers are meant for souls, not living humans, Ichigo. Your Quincy powers, however, have been with you since you were in the womb, and can be freely used in a human body. Now that Sode no Shirayuki returned to Rukia, taking her Shinigami powers with her, the void that was left has been filled by your Quincy powers."

"Are you saying I can't unlock my Shinigami powers until I die?"

"No, your own Shinigami powers already awakened when Rukia transferred her power to you, but your Quincy powers are stronger, so they are dominant. You can nevertheless use Shinigami skills such as Kido and Flash Step if you want."

"But what about a zanpaktou?"

Gesshokuro visibly hesitated before answering. "That is not possible right now."

Ichigo recalled the vision of the Shinigami explaining how zanpaktou were made, and frowned. "I need an asauchi…but why did I have a zanpaktou after losing Rukia's powers, if I never got one?"

He was sure that Shinigami had explained that too, but he just couldn't remember that part.

"There is another spiritual entity in here with us. It has bonded with us, and has acquired the properties of a zanpaktou by taking in our spirit pressure," said Gesshokuro. "It is best left alone."

"Why? Isn't it better to have a zanpaktou?"

"Because the entity is a hollow. A very powerful hollow. Although it is more malleable than normal hollows and taken on properties of a Shinigami zanpaktou, its true nature is still that of a hollow, with the instinct to rage, despair, and stave off its eternal hunger."

Ichigo was rooted in place with a stark cold as the realization set in. It must have been his inner hollow that Gesshokuro was talking about. But if it was already inside of him, and he hadn't undergone any hollowfication yet, then it wasn't really the inner hollow of his own soul at all.

It was a hollow made up of the many souls it had consumed, just how like the Asauchi were made of many Shinigami souls. That was why it could become his zanpaktou.

When he was training to master the Final Getsuga Tenshou, that thing had called itself Zangetsu too. Now he knew why.

"But…I need that power. Without it, I won't stand a chance against the espada. I even needed it for the fight against Byakuya," Ichigo said quietly.

"Please trust me, Ichigo. To accept that power now would be detrimental to your growth. Not only would you be at risk of complete hollowfication, becoming dangerous to those you wish to protect, the natures of Hollow and Quincy are fundamentally incompatible. The cost of the strength you would gain is to weaken your Quincy abilities. This is not a wise trade."

"Can I really get strong enough with just Quincy powers?" The doubt on his face was obvious. He immediately thought of Ishida. He knew intellectually that he had to be strong, but he didn't actually see him in action that much. He'd heard from Orihime that Ishida had defeated a captain when they were rescuing Rukia, but did he get strong enough to take on any of the Espada? Then he remembered how his out of control hollow almost killed Ishida during the fight against Ulquiorra, and grimaced.

"Ichigo, there is no limit to the potential of a Quincy. Unlike Shinigami and Hollows who can only use their own spirit pressure to fight, all the spirit particles in the world could be ours to command."

Gesshokuro moved in front of him in a flash, and removed his sunglasses.

"I promise, Ichigo, I will not hold you back anymore. My goal has always been to protect you. Once, I sought to protect you from putting yourself in danger, but we have learned from your visions what lies at the end of that road. All of that is now in the past. A new, better, path is open to you. Move forward, and don't look back. If you need power, then _take it_. If you must fight, then _win_!"

The old man held out his hand.

Ichigo looked deeply into the Gesshokuro's eyes, then smiled as he took the offered hand.

O O O

When Ichigo returned to the outside world, Rukia had already sealed her Zanpaktou and it was back to its normal state, not the huge version Ichigo had.

"So you're actually a Quincy?" Rukia asked, without waiting for Ichigo to explain.

"Yeah. I guess my mom must have been a Quincy, because my dad definitely isn't. Now that Sode no Shirayuki has gone back to you, my Quincy powers have taken over."

"You know what that means, right? You can't purify hollows anymore, and if you destroy them, they'll be removed from the cycle of reincarnation, and if too many are destroyed, it'll break the balance of souls."

Ichigo frowned and was silent for a moment. "Rukia, I can't make any promises. I'll try to let you take care of them, but if I have to use my powers to protect, then I will. Also, I have Shinigami powers of my own. I just don't have a zanpaktou. Isn't there a way to purify hollows without a zanpaktou?"

"With Kido, or Hakuda, yes. But that doesn't make sense. I've never heard of a human having Shinigami powers. You're not supposed to develop your own powers just because I transferred some to you temporarily. Only souls born or reincarnated in Soul Society can develop Shinigami powers."

She walked around examining him as if he was some sort of unnatural creature.

"That's because my dad was a Shinigami. He'll tell me eventually and helps train me for the final fight against Aizen."

Ichigo stood up from his meditative position and wiped the dust from his clothes off.

"That uncouth and violent man is a Shinigami?" Rukia made a face of disapproval.

"You're one to talk, you're pretty violent yourself."

"I am not!" Despite her words, she flung a half hearted punch at his shoulder, which Ichigo dodged with a laugh.

"And no, right now he's not a Shinigami. I can't remember if he ever tells me why he lost his powers, but I don't think he gets them back for a few more months."

"Oh…so that's why the memory erasers work on him."

"Yeah. He's pretty much a normal human right now. Kinda like what would have happened to you in that gigai…" Ichigo frowned as he considered what that might mean. Did Urahara have something to do with that too?

"But why didn't you know about your own Quincy powers? You never used them in the future, even after I got my powers back?"

"Ah that's because—" then Ichigo stopped himself before telling Rukia he had a hollow inside of him. What would she think? He quickly adjusted his explanation. "…when Byakuya destroyed my Saketsu and Hakusui, he must have removed my Quincy powers too. Later on, after Urahara cut my soul chain—"

"He did _what?! _He _killed_ you?" Rukia's face was one of sheer outrage as her spirit pressure rose dangerously. "I can't believe I ever thought he was a decent person even though he was exiled from Soul Society! He completely tricked me! Damn it!"

"Uh…I didn't really die? I re-awakened my Shinigami powers just before I completely turned into a hollow. So I guess my Shinigami powers ended up becoming dominant over my Quincy powers, and I never found out."

"But if you didn't awaken your powers, you would have died and turned into a hollow! How can you act like it's nothing?"

Ichigo grimaced. "Sorry, it's just…I needed my powers to rescue you."

"Are you saying you _agreed_ to let him kill you to re-awaken your powers?" Rukia asked with an incredulous face.

"Well, not exactly…I didn't know he was going to do that."

"I'm going to kill him…" Rukia's hand moved to her sheathed Zanpaktou and prepared to unsheathe it again.

"Wait, wait. We still need him alive for now, and he doesn't look it, but he's _really_ strong. Neither of us can beat him yet, even working together." Ichigo put up his hands in a gesture for her to stop, but it didn't look like she was listening. "Besides, even if I knew, I think I would have done it anyways. There wasn't any time to do it any other way if I wanted to save you."

With that last sentence, Rukia's murderous aura was replaced by one of anguish and helplessness as her hand fell away from her sword.

"You…you idiot! Why would you go so far for me?

"Rukia…I owe you my life. That night, you protected me and my whole family, and sacrificed everything to save me. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I couldn't do the same for you. You're my friend, Rukia, and I'd do it again if that's what it's gonna take."

"No!" She shouted with a glare. "You can't. I have my powers again. I won't let you do something so stupid."

Ichigo glared back and crossed his arms. "And I'm not going to let you get executed. Besides, I probably won't need to do that again, so it doesn't matter."

"You'd better not."

After another long silence, it was obvious that neither of them were willing to back down, so Rukia changed the topic.

"So what next? Should I just report back to Seireitei?"

"No! Definitely not. I don't know when Aizen found out the other method of extracting the Hougyoku. It's just too risky. Right now…"

Ichigo looked at the silver cross on his wrist.

"We need to get stronger—"

He was interrupted by a sudden jerk of Rukia's head towards the city, and followed by beeping from Rukia's Soul Pager.

"Hollows! I'll take care of this, you stay back!" She said, taking off.

"Wait, I'm coming with you!" He chased after her. Then he remembered that Rukia's gigai was still lying on the ground. "Oh crap…"

He sighed, turning back. "Guess I have to keep her gigai safe." He brought the body to sit up against a nearby tree.

Then a man in fishing gear walked over on the riverside path. "Oi! You alright there, missy?"

"Shit!" Ichigo cursed. The man gave no sign of noticing him, as he was a spirit right now.

Ichigo then watched dumbfounded as the man with fishing gear came over and acted concerned, checking for Rukia's pulse and shaking her, before his face took on a strange expression.

"Eh…hehehe…what a beautiful girl…uncle will bring you home and take good care of you…" He tenderly touched her unresponsive face and tried to pick her up.

"This perverted bastard!" Ichigo kicked the man away.

"Augh!" The man groaned. "What was that?" He looked around blindly, trying to find what hit him.

"It's surely dangerous around these parts, better get you away quick!" He said to himself before making a dash at Rukia's body.

Ichigo blocked his way and punched his gut, taking the wind out of him. He collapsed to the ground clutching at his stomach.

"In-invisible monsters! Don't worry, uncle will save you!" The man shouted valiantly as he struggling back to his feet and swung punches around wildly.

"Oh come on, stop trying to play the hero you creep!" Just as Ichigo was considering knocking the flailing man out, he seemed to get an idea. "Wait a minute…I'm a spirit and this is a gigai…" He muttered as he looked at Rukia's body.

Then he took off the Soul Capture glove, quickly placed it into Rukia's backpack, and tried to enter the gigai.

It was a bit of a struggle as the body seemed to be rejecting him, but he managed to get inside after channeling some more of his spirit pressure into the body.

Then in her body, he stood up and ran off.

"W-wait! Don't go, it's not safe!" The man shouted and chased after him.

O O O

When Ichigo finally caught up to Rukia, she had just finished off the last hollow and looked like she was feeling pleased with herself as she sheathed her zanpaktou.

Then she noticed her body running up to her and her face turned incredulous.

A quick bout of sensing later, her brows twitched and she drew her sword again dangerously. "Ichigo…what are you doing in _my_ body, you pervert?!"

"Wait, I can explain!"


	5. Chapter 5

**5 – Way of the Spirit**

In the days that followed Ichigo's future dreams, he never had any more visions of the future.

Instead, he spent all his free time and part of his sleep time in his own inner world with Gesshokuro, training to master Quincy techniques.

Ichigo and Rukia still attended school as usual and their hollow hunting routine continued as before, but neither of them would enter their spirit forms.

For Ichigo, it was because he didn't need to enter spirit form to use any of his powers.

For Rukia, it was to keep up appearances. Aside from that first day when she rushed out recklessly, she'd never left her gigai. The gigai's drain on spirit pressure was no longer a concern now that she had her full power again, but Ichigo still recharged her with more spirit pressure every night just to be safe. On the other hand, the special gigai also had the property of suppressing and hiding spirit pressure. As long as she actively restrained her own spirit pressure, it couldn't be easily sensed that her power had returned.

They ended up frequently skipping classes together amidst increasing rumors about them at school.

To purify hollows, Rukia started teaching Ichigo Kido, which they could use in human form as well, albeit weakened.

Ichigo's talent with Kido was terrible, but he was not lacking in power by any means. Thankfully there were Hado spells that didn't require much control and were just big blasts of power.

At the same time, his Quincy training proved helpful for his work in Kido as well.

His Shinigami spirit pressure caused an effect of pushing away spirit particles. This made it more difficult to manipulate and gather spirit particles for Quincy techniques, but also forced Ichigo to train to control and separate his Shinigami spirit pressure from his Quincy spirit pressure.

The effect of his Shinigami spirit pressure was much stronger when he was in spirit form, because human life and Shinigami powers did not mix well, whereas Quincy powers were always at full strength, but suffered from the disadvantage of not having as many spirit particles around to use in the human world.

The result was that it was far easier for him to manage and suppress his Shinigami powers with Quincy spirit pressure while in a human body, and the more he trained with the Quincy arts, the easier it became to use it to 'corral' his Shinigami spirit pressure as if it was just another form of spirit particle, which in turn allowed him to _use_ that Shinigami spirit pressure more effectively for Kido.

Because he spent all of his time in a human body, he could train his Quincy powers to manipulate spirit pressure and spirit particles almost 24/7, and his skill in Kido would improve without actually having to practice attention-grabbing spells like a normal Shinigami.

This was even more powerful for healing Kido after he learned the proper way to heal, because it wasn't flashy and he could train it on himself.

He would constantly exhaust his spirit energy to generate Quincy spirit pressure to gather spirit particles, then flow the newly gathered spirit particles into his body.

Using a Quincy technique it was possible to recover spirit energy by cannibalizing his spirit body's own existing spirit particles, filling the cannibalized gaps with the gathered spirit particles.

Next he would use the renewed spirit energy to generate Shinigami spirit pressure in order to use healing Kido on himself. Normally healing Kido would be used to restore the patient's spirit energy, which would then passively raise spirit pressure levels so that the healer could coax it with their own spirit pressure to slowly heal the body as they ate and digested food, similar to how humans healed over time.

But because Ichigo's Quincy powers already provided the spirit particles, all he had to do was integrate the particles, which cost almost nothing, leaving him with a net gain of spirit energy.

He could use his Quincy powers to convert gathered spirit particles directly into spirit energy too, but the point of this exercise wasn't to recover spirit energy, it was to provide unlimited practice for healing by repeatedly destroying small pieces of his body so that they could be healed.

As the days passed, Ichigo grew increasingly comfortable at using his Quincy powers, until he was able to create the spirit sword.

Gesshokuro had made him focus on the Heilig Bogen first, as the traditional weapon of the Quincy, and that was what he'd been using against Hollows, but he liked the sword more.

As a weapon that was expected to repeatedly clash with other things in melee without destabilizing, it was much more difficult to make compared to the bow or Heilig Pfeil—the generic arrows.

Once Gesshokuro judged his spirit sword creation adequate, Ichigo immediately asked Rukia for a spar.

Instead of finding a place out of the city, the two of them used Ichigo's inner world as the battleground.

The first time Rukia entered Jinzen after reclaiming her zanpaktou, she had found out from Sode no Shirayuki that she could still go into Ichigo's inner world at will, and if Rukia and Ichigo were touching in the real world, then Sode no Shirayuki could bring Rukia into Ichigo's inner world with her.

So they immediately took advantage of this to train together in secret.

"This is Heilig Klinge," Ichigo announced.

Rukia smiled and took up a stance facing Ichigo.

It had been a long time since Rukia had a chance to spar with anyone.

She was just as eager to fight as Ichigo seemed to be.

Ichigo shifted the sword to hold it in both hands, and the two's eyes met, while Gesshokuro and Sode no Shirayuki watched from a distance.

"On my mark. Begin!" Rukia took charge as the one with more experience.

Both of them rushed at each other and their swords met with a clang.

Rukia spared no time in following up with another strike from the side, then an uppercut, a stab and an overhead slash.

Each one was blocked, parried, or dodged, to her surprise.

Although his steps were cautious and his movements betrayed an unfamiliarity with the sword, he was doing better than she expected based on his skills in fighting hollows when he had her powers.

And against a Shinigami opponent like herself, it was exceptional considering he'd only been in one other fight against another Shinigami.

The difference between his brief scuffle with Saido Eikichiro and what Rukia was experiencing from him now was like night and day.

A furious exchange of sword slashes followed.

With every step, every swing, Ichigo seemed to gain a surety and fluidity that he didn't have only moments ago, the kind of grace in battle that could only be gained through experience.

His biggest problem seemed to be that he wasn't anticipating his own strength and speed correctly, lashing out with strikes that would be effective if he had more strength or speed, but simply created new openings instead because his body failed keep up.

It was like a veteran returning to combat after a long absence and atrophied muscles, rather than a newbie just starting their training.

'When did he get this good?' Rukia thought as she felt the pressure from Ichigo's swordplay.

Each strike from Rukia was met evenly, though Rukia felt that she had a big advantage in the density of her spirit pressure, as Ichigo's was still largely wild and uncontrolled, even if he had more of it.

"Don't underestimate me, Rukia! It seems like my soul remembers the skills I learned in my dreams!"

A sudden feint almost caught Rukia off guard before she jumped back.

"That's ridiculous!" Rukia shouted back. He was getting too cocky for his own good. Even if he was improving with stunning rapidity, she was only showing him the bare minimum of her own skill to test him, limiting herself to only swordplay.

Right now, she was his mentor, and this was their very first spar. There was no way she could go all out. But maybe she could raise the level a bit.

"Hah! You're better than I thought too, Rukia. For some reason, I don't remember ever sparring with you. But I really should have! Why the hell are you an unseated officer, when you're also damn good at Kido, and your shikai is overpowered as hell?"

Rukia disappeared in a flash and came from behind Ichigo, who just barely blocked her strike with a curse. "Shit!"

"Don't get distracted in a fight, idiot!"

"Ora!" He pushed her sword back and disappeared in his own shunpo.

His shunpo was inaccurate and rough, but very fast.

Another furious clash followed, with both of them using flashing around on every strike and dodge.

When they got into a good rhythm, Rukia finally answered. "Do you really think I'm that strong?"

Ichigo answered in between large gasps. "Hell yeah! Your swordsmanship is better than Renji's, he can't even do Kido for shit and he's a vice-captain!"

"Like you can do better? And he wasn't a vice-captain yet before I came to Karakura. Nii-sama must have promoted him recently," her voice even and unruffled from a fight of only this intensity.

Another clang and Ichigo's sword slightly cracked. "Crap!"

Rukia pushed forward into the crack intending to break it, while moving one hand away from the handle of her own sword. "Hainawa!"

In a single smooth motion, the rope was thrown onto Ichigo's legs, preventing him from jumping back to relieve the pressure of the sword clash.

However, Ichigo suddenly smirked and flicked his sword toward himself into a horizontal hold, causing Rukia to lose her balance leaning forward from the sudden lack of opposing force.

"Okasen!"

Spirit pressure surged into the Heilig Klinge, then the whole blade cracked and burst into a flash of light.

Numerous explosions ensued, each broken piece of the Heilig Klinge had released their energy like a bomb with the deliberately unstable Hado spell acting as a catalyst.

But while Rukia was hit by the explosions, Ichigo instead appeared a short distance away with only barely singed clothes, even though half the Hainawa rope was still binding his legs.

He had used the flow created by the splintering Heilig Klinge particles, which were still under his control, to slide away—an application of the Quincy high speed movement technique of Wogenschritt, or Hirenkyaku as Ishida called it.

On the other side, Rukia reappeared after a Shunpo that was just a little too late in a fit of coughs. Her clothes were torn and her skin was bloodied all over.

Ichigo quickly formed another spirit sword, this time thinner and shorter, to cut the rope binding him, before notching the sword into a position for firing, and forming the necessary bow in the same step.

Rukia wove her hands in the motion of a circle as Ichigo fired.

"Bakudo #39: Enkosen!" A spinning disc blocked the powerful shot, then it was followed by a huge plume of smoke that covered the area around Rukia.

Ichigo fired several more regular Heilig Pfeil at high speed, trying to target Rukia by spirit pressure sensing alone, but none hit.

Soon he heard Rukia a low voice from the smoke. "…look upon yourself with horror and then claw out your own throat!"

She shot out from the smoke into the air through a long-range shunpo, weaving arcane symbols in the air and completed the incantation.

"Bakudo #9: Geki!"

Ichigo's body on the spot with a cover of red energy. He saw that her wounds had been healed already, and her sword was sheathed, but her hands were still moving. He struggled against the binding force with his spirit pressure, and almost succeeded when Rukia stacked a second Bakudo.

"Bakudo #9: Horin!"

An orange tendril whipped into him from her fingers even as she passed by overhead on her shunpo's momentum. He was flung into the air and dragged behind Rukia, swinging above her as she landed.

Despite apparently being cast without a chant, this was not actually Eishouhaki—instead, it was a double incantation using the fact that Geki and Horin had identical chants, resulting in the Horin being equally powerful as a fully incanted Kido.

"Hado #11: Tsuzuri Raiden!"

The heavily bound Ichigo spasmed in pain as electric current ran through the Horin tendril and right into his body.

Ichigo was in a free fall when the Bakudo spells dissipated, muscles paralyzed, and Rukia flashed back into the air right above Ichigo.

"Hado #33: Sokatsui!"

A ball of blue fire crashed into Ichigo and pummeled him into the ground.

O O O


	6. Chapter 6

**6 - Way of the Spirit 2**

Ichigo sat back up with a groan after healing himself and admitting defeat. "You could probably wipe the floor with any of the vice-captains."

"You're exaggerating, Ichigo. Renji, I could believe, but the other vice-captains are strong. I wouldn't be able to beat them."

She remembered clearly how strong her vice-captain Kaien-dono was. He was the one who turned her from an academy graduate with subpar zanjutsu grades into a skilled swordswoman. The thought sent a pang of guilt through her, as it had for the past few decades every time she thought of the disaster that led to his death.

And Ichigo was scarily similar in appearance. She had even wondered if he was his reincarnation, but that was just fanciful thinking, wasn't it?

This wasn't a chance to atone for killing Kaien-dono to save herself.

He was gone and in his own words, scattered into spirit particles. Even if he did reincarnate, it would be a different person. It wasn't like the way souls passing from the human world reincarnated in Soul Society whole.

But she definitely wouldn't let someone else die because of her again. Certainly not Ichigo. She had to show this fool she didn't need protecting.

"No, I'm serious! You defeated that sand hollow in one hit, when Ishida, Chad, and I were having trouble against him three on one! I also heard that you killed the 9th espada one on one, even though those guys are all at least captain-level."

"I don't know what you're talking about…what are the espada?"

In the distance, Gesshokuro and Sode no Shirayuki had decided to have their own friendly bout.

Both Rukia and Ichigo watched the two spirits move with incredible grace.

"They're the ten strongest Arrancar in Aizen's army. All of them were at least Adjuchas level Menos and crazy strong. Every other Espada took a captain, or multiple captain-level Shinigami and Visored working together to take down."

"I must have gotten lucky. I'm nowhere near captain-level." She sheathed her zanpaktou with a frown, as Gesshokuro began to overwhelm Sode no Shirayuki.

Sode no Shirayuki was just as good as Rukia herself, but Gesshokuro seemed to be in a different league entirely, contrary to what she'd have expected based on Ichigo's own performance.

"Come on, Rukia, you have to admit there's something wrong. You're definitely strong enough to be vice-captain level. There's no reason for you to not even be seated."

"Why does it matter? It's not like I care about having a high rank."

She knew why she hadn't been promoted for so long. It was the fault of her brother, who didn't want her to get assigned more risky missions. But she'd never had big ambitions in the first place, and with Kaien-dono's tragic death, nobody wanted to try and take his place as vice-captain of the 13th.

"It bothers me." Ichigo stood up next to her. "Isn't it unfair? Why is Soul Society like that? The law about transferring power to humans is stupid too. You're doing your job saving lives. What the hell's wrong with that? Even if Aizen might have had a hand in your judgment, the fact that law exists at all is just retarded."

"You shouldn't say that, Ichigo. I'm sure the law is there for a reason. One of the most important rules for Shinigami is that we can't interfere with the lives of the living. Transferring power to a human is a gross violation of that."

"You interfere with human lives all the time and erase their memories after fighting hollows. Why's this any different?"

"I don't know. I didn't make the laws."

"Well who did?"

"Central 46, I assume."

"Who are the Central 46 anyways? Where do their members come from? After they died, I never heard any more about them."

Every Shinigami that went through the Academy had been taught about the government in Soul Society. Rukia drew upon that knowledge as she answered.

"They are the ruling government body in Seireitei, and their identities are secret. They've existed since the beginning of Soul Society, and were handpicked by the Spirit King. After that, each time a member had to be replaced, the remaining members would nominate a new candidate for the Spirit King to appoint. That's probably why you didn't hear any more about them. If they all died, there's nobody left to do the nominations, so it would take a lot longer for the Spirit King choose them all."

"…they're appointed by the Spirit King? Are you sure?" Ichigo asked with obvious doubt on his face. He had witnessed a memory of what the Spirit King was. How could that thing choose anything? It wasn't _dead_ but it didn't seem alive enough to be capable of conscious thought, especially without a brain.

"It's just what they taught us in the Academy," Rukia said with a shrug. Then her face looked annoyed as the spar between their spirits ended, with Gesshokuro victorious despite having used only a single hand to wield his spirit sword and not even looking winded. Sode no Shirayuki hadn't used shikai, but there was no dying that the black clothed man was her superior in swordplay. "More importantly, why is Gesshokuro so skilled? How can he be so much better than you?"

"Huh? I thought all zanpaktou spirits were like that."

"No, they're supposed to grow with the Shinigami. Sode no Shirayuki might be better at using her dances, but in Zanjutsu we're exactly the same."

"I dunno. He was better than me in my visions too, so it's not like he absorbed my future skills faster." Ichigo recalled the times he'd trained with Gesshokuro. "The few times I fought him, they were impossible to win, and I wasn't supposed to. Just had to find the right answer to pass his…tests."

He'd overlooked something. There had been times when he trained against his hollow—the other part of Zangetsu—and they were basically evenly matched. When his hollow was stronger, it was because he knew how to use Zangetsu's sword better, not because he was better in swordsmanship. It was just Gesshokuro that seemed to be far beyond either of them. So much that in the times he'd seen his hollow Zangetsu talk to Gesshokuro, the hollow seemed to _respect_ the man and took orders from him, where he was always insulting Ichigo for being weak.

It was a mystery, probably one of those things Ichigo would be expected to figure out as part of some other test, he thought. In the mean time, he was just grateful to have a teacher that so skilled at everything. He was pretty sure Ishida didn't have a personal spirit teaching him anything.

O O O

"O Lord, mask of skin and blood, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of man, light and firmament, the veil of earth is torn, pierce the endless sky with your shining fist! Hado #32: Okasen!"

The hollow that was stabbed into the ground by numerous Quincy arrows was hit by the arc of golden light from Ichigo's palms, and disintegrated.

"That was great, Ichigo!" Rukia gave him a hard pat on the back. "Now to take care of that Plus."

He gave her a grin before the two walked over to the scared woman ghost they saved from the hollow.

"Relax, we're not going to hurt you. We're soul reapers, and we can help you move you to the next life," said Ichigo.

The woman didn't look convinced, but didn't try to run either.

Ichigo sighed and regretted that they didn't look like proper soul reapers, being in their human bodies and wearing casual clothes.

Nevertheless, he began the incantation for the ancient Kido version of Soul Burial that hardly anyone used anymore, but which Rukia learned anyway a long time ago.

Just when the soul passed over, someone stepped out from the shadow of the telephone pole behind him.

He was dressed in priestly white robes, and on his right wrist was an irregular and physical Quincy Zeichen that had only four ends with a small circle at the centre.

"Good evening, Kurosaki-kun, Kuchiki-san," he said.

Ichigo and Rukia looked at each other, an unspoken understanding passing between them, before fully turning and returning the greeting.

"Good evening, Ishida-san," said Rukia.

"I was wondering when you'd come to us, Ishida," said Ichigo, forgoing the honorific.

Ishida Uryu's glasses glinted in the street light, and his eyes went to Ichigo's own Zeichen, which was materialized in spirit form on his left wrist. It was the standard shape emblazoned on Uryu's back, except for the round hole in the centre.

Constructing permanent spiritual artifacts without a physical medium was an advanced technique. One that he couldn't believe Kurosaki had mastered in the week since he first noticed the Quincy nature of his classmate's spirit pressure.

And he wouldn't have noticed at all if it weren't for Kurosaki actively using Quincy techniques in class, gathering spirit particles right in Uryu's range.

Had he been hiding his powers all along?

Unlike Shinigami or Hollow spirit pressure, Quincy spirit pressures were much more difficult to detect, and easily hidden by a skilled Quincy. Instead of expelling it for their techniques, it gathered spirit particles toward them—and the spirit particles could mask the Quincy's own spirit pressure.

"So you were already aware of me. When did you notice?" He asked, his eyes moving back to Kurosaki's face.

"Honestly? Only a week ago. My sensing ability was pretty bad before that."

"…a week ago? That would be the same time you started practicing Quincy techniques in class."

As he spoke, spirit ribbons materialized around them. Uryu reached out a hand to grab onto a red spirit ribbon as his eyes narrowed into a glare.

"The spirit pressure of a Shinigami is distinct. When condensed into spirit ribbons, it is red, rather than the white of humans. Unlike you, Kurosaki, I have long since mastered such a basic skill as spirit pressure sensing. I sensed your spirit pressure the first day you entered Karakura High. I sensed the changes in your spirit pressure last month, when you gained the powers of a Shinigami. I know what Kuchiki-san is too. And today, I confirmed with my eyes your use of Shinigami powers. So tell me, Kurosaki, what did you do to yourself to gain the hereditary powers of a Quincy? Did you take the souls of dead Quincy in the spirit world and steal their power?"

"Woah, calm down. I was always a Quincy," said Ichigo. "I just didn't know about it until last week."

"Impossible…"

"Why? I've always been spiritually aware, even before Rukia let me borrow her Shinigami powers."

After a long silence, Ichigo and Rukia tensed when Uryu's hand moved up. Then he merely adjusted his glasses, and they relaxed.

"If that's true, then why are you still working with a Shinigami? I see. You must be unaware of the history of our people. How they slaughtered us all. We are the last Quincies alive, Kurosaki, and here you are, consorting with our enemies. Don't be fooled by their lies! To them, our very existence is a crime. You can fight for them with all your heart, and they will but watch pitilessly as you die, never lifting a finger to help you in return, if they don't kill you themselves first!"

Rukia flinched at the hateful tone. "It's not like that…when you kill hollows, you obliterate them completely…we were just trying to stop the Quincy from breaking the balance of souls."

"And I agree with that. But the Quincy have tried to work with Shinigami before, and each time, we were told that we weren't necessary! Should we not have the right to defend ourselves and protect others when you Shinigami aren't there? You say we're unnecessary, but when we needed your help, where were you?! Where were you when my grandfather was surrounded by hollows, unwilling to destroy them because of _your_ demands, and died for it?! When a Quincy soul is eaten by a hollow, it is also obliterated! Are our lives somehow worth less than the hollows you forced us to stop killing in the name of preserving the balance?!"

"Quincy souls are obliterated when eaten by a hollow…?" Ichigo asked with wide eyes.

"That's right, Kurosaki. You didn't even know that much? When a soul is eaten by a Hollow, it becomes part of the Hollow. But Quincy souls cannot become Hollows, so the soul will struggle against the Hollow until one or the other is completely obliterated," said Uryu in a scornful tone.

"But…I…"

A mix of shock, disbelief, and confusion was on his face, when Ichigo contacted Gesshokuro again.

'Is it true that Quincies can't become Hollows? Why was it possible for me to Hollowfy in my visions?'

'A Quincy cannot hollowfy, this is true, but you also have the nature of a Shinigami. It is possible to suppress your Quincy nature such that the part of you which is Shinigami can hollowfy. This is why accessing the powers of the Hollow within you will cause your Quincy powers to weaken. I would have no choice but to suppress our Quincy nature to prevent soul suicide.'

"That means…mom…!" Ichigo's legs felt weak.

Rukia grabbed onto him before he could collapse to his knees.

"Even if I find Grand Fisher and kill him, Rukia…she won't be released! She'll never pass on to Soul Society…her soul was…obliterated…" He said in a empty voice.

"Ichigo…I'm so sorry…I didn't know that about Quincies," she said in a guilt-stricken whisper.

Uryu looked at his fellow Quincy, and stayed silent in respect. He had wanted to criticize his ignorant classmate further, but it seemed that they were more alike than he'd thought.

"I'd been wondering…if she was a Quincy, why did she lose to Grand Fisher…I thought it was my fault…because she was protecting me. But that's wasn't all, was it? She must have been holding back, trying not to destroy the Hollow…it's obvious in hindsight. She married a Shinigami, so of course she'd try to respect their ways. And I also wondered…why didn't Grand Fisher finish me off after she died?"

Ichigo clenched his fists and stood straight again. "Now, I get it. It's because he _couldn't_. Mom's soul must have continued to fight inside of him even after death."

"So you understand, Kurosaki? When we needed their help, the Shinigami left us to die," Uryu said coldly. "That's the kind of scum you're working for."

"Yeah. I understand," said Ichigo.

"Ichigo, it's not like that…we probably just couldn't get there in time…there are so many Hollows, we can't be everywhere…" Rukia said weakly with a hurt expression.

"So you admit that you can't handle all the Hollows, yet still think the Quincies are unnecessary?" Ishida scoffed.

"That's…I didn't make that decision…"

"Enough, Ishida. Not every Shinigami is the same. I know that Rukia is a good person. She saved my life nearly at the cost of her own. Don't misunderstand, I'm not working for the Shinigami. In fact, we're criminals right now, in their eyes. We hunt Hollows and help souls pass on because there's no one else here to do it," said Ichigo.

"Criminals, huh? I should have known. You're a delinquent to the soul," said Ishida.

"Hey! I'm not a delinquent! The teachers just treat me like that because of my hair, which is natural!"

"You mean you don't get into fights with thugs and gangs all the time?"

"I don't go around picking fights! They pick fights with me!"

"Tch. Whatever. If you're not working for the Shinigami, then I suppose we aren't enemies," said Uryu, turning around to leave.

Ichigo watched his back incredulously. "That's it? Did you come prepared to fight or something? And now that we're not gonna fight, you're just gonna leave?"

Uryu stopped and slightly inclined his head. "I came to find out what you are. Now that I know, I have no other business with you."

"We're the last Quincies, right? Shouldn't we at least try to be friends or something? How about we train together?"

Uryu turned back. "Hmph. If you wanted help with your abilities, you should have just asked me. I would not mind teaching a fellow Quincy."

"Who said anything about teaching? I bet I know some tricks you don't," Ichigo said with a cheeky grin.

"Is that a challenge?" Uryu tilted his head as the glare on his glasses flashed again.


	7. Chapter 7

**7 – Halcyon Days**

Uryu inspected the Heilig Klinge in his hands with a distasteful expression.

"A Quincy wielding a sword…this is an abomination," he said.

"Don't be so traditional. Sometimes you have to get in the thick of it. And it's good practice making it too. Compared to the bow and arrow, it's much harder to make the sword, because it has to survive contact with the enemy, and not just explode," Ichigo said, stretching after their spar.

They were in the basement under the Ishida hospital, which was surprisingly spacious. In fact, it seemed to be quite a bit larger than should have been physically possible, and Ichigo suspected a certain shopkeeper had something to do with it. It was nowhere near as ridiculous as the vast open space underneath Urahara's shop though.

Here, this basement at least still looked like a really big underground storage room, rather than that place which looked like a whole different world.

"There are tools we can use in melee, Kurosaki. The Seele Schneider is more effective than creating a purely spiritual sword," said Uryu. He handed the Klinge back to Ichigo, then walked a bit to a shelf to retrieve a metallic cylindrical object.

Ichigo listened to Uryu describe its function and how to use it to break down enemy spirit particles, but his face turned increasingly distressed when Uryu began to drone on about how it was made.

After nearly ten minutes, Ichigo sweatdropped and coughed. "Uh…right. I think I'm good."

'_That's way too complicated! I completely didn't understand any of that,_' he thought.

Uryu shot him a look of annoyance. "I haven't finished explaining."

"Hahaha…okay never mind that Ishida. I won't understand even if you explained all day. There's way too much knowledge I'm missing on the basics before I can tackle something as complicated as the Seele Schneider. I've never made _any_ tool before," said Ichigo.

"Then where did you get your Zeichen?" Uryu asked with a frown.

Ichigo looked at the Quincy cross attached to his wrist and scratched his head.

"I guess I'm a bit different from most Quincies. When I gave Rukia's Shinigami powers back to her, I got a Quincy spirit form instead of turning into a Plus soul. It came with the Zeichen, and I can manifest it whenever I want. Now that I think about it, it's almost like a Zanpaktou that I can use in a human body."

It was after all, the medium through which he concentrated spirit particles and formed either the Heilig Bogen or Klinge.

Uryu's face twitched as he heard Ichigo compare a Quincy tool to a Zanpaktou.

"I see. I would like for you to demonstrate the Hirenkyaku again, Kurosaki," Uryu said.

Ichigo obliged.

Today, the two Quincies had been comparing techniques that they knew.

To Ichigo, it was enlightening to see the level of mastery Uryu had already achieved in all the basic skills. He couldn't deny that Uryu was in fact stronger than him in many ways. But that was natural, because he himself had only just started learning.

But after the first few spars and Ichigo started to use his full breadth of skills, Uryu wasn't actually much of a challenge.

This was because Uryu had focused almost exclusively on the traditional archery of the Quincy, and had no skill in melee whatsoever.

Furthermore, he hadn't started practicing the Wogenschritt—what Uryu called Hirenkyaku—yet. Because Uryu was skilled enough to launch hundreds of arrows accurately and shoot across huge distances, he found no need to actually move. And he was fast enough at it that Hollows would be shot down even point blank if they rushed him.

This, however, didn't work on an opponent like Ichigo, once he started using Wogenschritt to dodge and rapidly get close to fight in melee instead of competing with archery.

As a result, Uryu begrudgingly admitted that Ichigo did have some things he could learn.

O O O

While Ichigo was off training with Uryu in Quincy techniques, Rukia decided to hang out with Ichigo's friends.

She tagged along while Orihime, Tatsuki and Chizuru went to the mall to shop for new clothes.

"Kuchiki-san, have you really never been to a mall?" Orihime asked with a curious expression while she watched Rukia look all around like a tourist as they walked along.

"It's true, Inoue-san. Where I come from, there weren't any big shopping centres. There were markets and shopping districts, but not an enormous building like this," said Rukia.

"What do you think? Impressed yet?" Tatsuki said.

"I admit it is impressive. To think that so many people would be gathered here to buy goods, it is very lively."

"Malls are a girl's second home, right Hime?!" Chizuru said while trying to put an arm around Orihime, but was blocked by Tatsuki.

"Hey, let's go over there! Those dresses look nice!" Orihime said with an excited face, pointing to a store front.

And so Rukia was encouraged to try out a number of different outfits, all while Tatsuki had to fight off many would-be suitors trying to get close to Orihime, including Chizuru.

Hours later, they were carrying filled shopping bags and sat down in the food court to enjoy some ice cream.

"Um…Rukia, can I ask you a question?" Orihime said with curious face.

"Yes?"

"Do you like Ichigo?

It was those rumors again. Rukia shook her head. "Those are just rumors. We're just friends."

"But you two walk to school and go home together every day," said Orihime. "That's what couples do."

"That's only because we live together."

"Eh?! You live together?" Orihime looked shocked. "So you've already progressed to that stage!"

"Woah, what? You and Ichigo live together? When did that happen?" Tatsuki asked, taking a big bite out of her cone.

"His father is an old acquaintance and I have no other relatives nearby, so the Kurosaki household was kind enough to let me stay with them. That's all," Rukia said. She licked her ice cream, carefully savoring it. After she agreed not to go back to Soul Society, Ichigo introduced Rukia to the Kurosaki household.

She did her typical 'innocent girl' act that convinced them that she was an orphan from another town who had been assigned horribly abusive foster parents and successfully filed for emancipation, at which point she left town and found her way to Karakura, to be saved by Ichigo when she had been cornered by thugs when she was lost and had no money to rent a place.

Ichigo's dad was of course extremely happy that Ichigo had brought a "third daughter" home and hid her in the closet, while Yuzu was tearfully sympathetic, so they easily agreed to let her stay with them, and even let her stay in the closet. Only Karin seemed suspicious, but she didn't voice any objections.

Orihime asked again. "So you're really just friends?"

"That's right."

"Jeez, how disappointing," Orihime crossed her arms. "If Rukia liked Ichigo too, then us girls would win two against one!"

Tatsuki spat out her ice scream. "Orihime…! That's…that's not how it works…the number of people is not rational…love isn't supposed to be unequal like that!"

Orihime looked cluelessly at her best friend, while Rukia looked flabbergasted.

"Ahh! I get it!" Chizuru said with an excited face. "Altogether there's 3 points right?! With 3 points and two women on one, the other side definitely loses! The result would be 2 points to women and 1 to men, a woman's victory! Augh, if it really happens, what should I do? I better get a camera! Wait! If Ichigo is out of the picture then in his place…"

Tatsuki choked Chizuru. "Shut up! Just die you pervert!"

Then Tatsuki turned to Rukia and asked with a suspicious face, "Anyways, are you sure you're just friends? What about all the times you guys skip class together? You better not trick Orihime just because she's naïve!"

"Ah, we just had to take care of some things."

"Like?"

"There are dangers lurking in this town that we have to protect innocent people from, I'm afraid I can't say any more," said Rukia.

"You've got to be kidding me. Is Ichigo getting you involved in gang fights or something? You should leave that stuff to the police. Vigilantism isn't legal." Tatsuki finished her cone and wiped her hands and mouth with a tissue.

"No, nothing like that. There's nothing illegal going on."

"Look, I used to fight with Ichigo against some gangs back in the day. I'm not going to rat you out or anything. But we're in high school now. You two need to think about your future. What if you get caught fighting? You won't get into a good school if you have a black mark like that," Tatsuki said in a lecturing tone.

"No, you're mistaken. We aren't fighting criminals. We fight evil spirits and help souls pass on peacefully," said Rukia.

"Pfftt!" Tatsuki laughed. "Oh, damn, are you serious? What, like Don Kanonji?"

"Yes, exactly!" Rukia said with a smile, then she crossed her hands over her chest and mimicked the television star. "BOAHAHAHAHA!"

Orihime took the cue and did the same thing. "BOAHAHAHAHA!"

"Stop, you guys…this is so embarrassing!" Tatsuki facepalmed.

Chizuru wrestled away from Tatsuki then stood up and did the laugh extremely loudly.

"Aw yeah, you girls are fans too?" Then a bunch of other mall go-ers near then all mimicked Don Kanonji.

"Smells like bad spirits!"

"Spirits are always with you!"

"BOAHAHAHAHA!"

"…" Tatsuki crashed upside down on the floor with a huge sweatdrop.

O O O

Rukia walked home by herself after saying good bye to the other girls.

On the way back, a black cat watched from the rooftops of nearby houses.

Suddenly a shadow covered her own on the ground, as something appeared behind her while she turned on to an empty street.

Her eyes widened for a moment before she felt a hard strike on the back of her head.

Her vision swam as she collapsed downwards, dropping her shopping bags. Unable to enter spirit form by herself and with her Shinigami powers severely weakened in a human body, she was helpless to resist as a gloved hand pressed down on her head, keeping her face down, then something was injected through her bare skin into her bloodstream.

Before she had a chance to manifest Sode no Shirayuki or try using Kido, she lost consciousness and her body was taken away.

O O O

"This is impossible," Urahara said, looking at the data on his computer screen.

Rukia's unconscious body lay on a platform with numerous gadgets and wires hooked up to her.

"So your plan failed, Kisuki?" The black cat spoke in a deep male voice from the opposite corner of the room.

"Could this also be the Hougyoku's doing?" Urahara murmured to himself, turning to look at Rukia's gigai. Then he stood up and began to pace back and forth.

"Kisuke, what exactly happened?" Yoruichi asked, still in cat form.

"She's…alive, for lack of a better word," said Kisuke.

"Alive?"

"I mean that she is for all intents and purposes, an actual human now! A living human," said Kisuke. "This is no longer a gigai. It's her body now."

"I don't understand. Isn't that what you wanted? For her to become a human, losing all her powers, and rendering the Hougyoku dormant forever?"

"Yes, but not like this. She hasn't lost her spirit pressure! That day when we felt her spirit pressure release was no coincidence. As I suspected, she has recovered all of it. No, in fact, it seems that she has even more than before…as if becoming a living human has allowed her soul to grow in the same way."

"So you will need another host?"

"It will not be easy to extract it from her. The implantation procedure only works one way. To extract it I would need special tools from Soul Society. And Aizen might have already stolen them."

"…"

Urahara sighed and shook his head. "It seems I miscalculated. She was supposed to enjoy her time as a human so much that she would wish to become one even as her powers were drained, thereby causing the Hougyoku to grant her wish eventually. Then guilt should have caused her to subconsciously wish her powers never returned. But instead, she has found a new resolve to fight…and for whatever reason she hasn't gone back to Soul Society even though her powers have returned."

"Hahaha…" Yoruichi laughed. "Kisuke, you cannot calculate the power of love. Ah, the wonders of youth…"

"This is not good, Yoruichi. Even if she stays in the Human World, the Hougyoku cannot fall dormant in the presence of a strong will stimulating it. It would be difficult to find another host if even I acquired the extraction tools. An ordinary human would have too many strong desires and growth potential. Only a non-living Shinigami soul, its will dulled by experiencing the slow passage of time on the scale of centuries, and who discarded their own power to become a human, seeking nothing but a mundane, normal life, could have put the Hougyoku to sleep."

"It was always a long shot, Kisuke. Do you really think Aizen still doesn't know where it is? Didn't you say he probably stole the extraction tools? Why would he do that unless he knew it was implanted in a soul? Just admit it, Kisuke. This isn't just bad luck. The plan was never going to work."

Urahara fell silent, simply looking at Rukia contemplatively.

"What are you thinking now, Kisuke? I know that look of yours. You're cooking up a new hare-brained idea, aren't you? Ichigo will never forgive you if you do something as stupid as destroying her Soul Chain and Soul Sleep."

"Haha…" Urahara opened his fan and fanned himself. "Of course I wouldn't do something so stupid. If the Hougyoku returned her powers once, it can do so again. At this point, we can't rely on keeping it hidden. But Aizen will try the Soukyoku first, because there's no risk of any pieces of her soul staying attached to the Hougyoku that way, and interfering with his own use of it. The backup plan will still work. I was just thinking that, if her will to live is strong enough, the Hougyoku might even help her survive it. So maybe this is a good thing after all!"

"Kisuke…you'd best not let things get to that point. If they ever find out…"

"I know."

O O O

Later that evening, Rukia woke up at the Ishida hospital, to find Ichigo standing over her with a worried face, and Uryu sitting to the side reading a book.

"Rukia! You feeling okay?" Ichigo asked.

"What…happened?" She asked, putting a hand to her temple as she got into an upright position.

"You were found passed out on the street, and brought here by an ambulance. It seems to be a case of anemia," said Uryu matter-of-factly.

"Anemia?" She asked with a puzzled expression. All of a sudden, she turned chibi with a huge head, her eyes were comically wide while she pursed her lips and held a finger to them. "What's that?"

Ishida instantly put on a doctor's coat neatly and cleared his throat.

"You don't have enough hemoglobin in your blood, a result of iron deficiency. You need to make sure you're getting the right amount of nutrition. Eat a balanced, iron-rich, diet. Most meat is rich in iron. Many teenage girls avoid meat thinking that it will cause them to gain weight, which is not true because the digestion of protein is very energy intensive and will not lead to weight gain as long as you avoid high fat meats. Even if you insist on eating very little meat, you need to get the necessary nutrients from other sources. I recommend sushi, or iron-fortified milk and cereals," said Uryu.

He grabbed a sheet from the nearby desk and handed it to Rukia.

It was a detailed description of various test results and the conclusions.

"So this gigai is defective now? Wonderful," she grumbled, reading over the sheet.

"No, the gigai is working perfectly. All the scans our doctors ran found no discernible flaws in it. I didn't have to make any adjustments to keep your secret. It is exactly like a human body. An impressive technology. I wouldn't have expected Shinigami to be capable of something like this," said Uryu.

"Well, it wasn't made by Shinigami," said Rukia. Then she looked at Ichigo and seemed to remember something. "Although…I guess Urahara is a Shinigami, just not a part of Soul Society anymore."

"You know, Rukia, I was just thinking, what if it's not just a gigai anymore? What if it really did turn you into a human?" Ichigo mused with his eyes looking up, his finger and thumb forming a checkmark under his chin, and the other hand on his hip.

"That's impossi…" Rukia trailed off. Was it really impossible? Ichigo did say that the gigai was intended to turn her into a human without any spirit pressure. What if it already completed the transformation without her noticing, before she got her spirit pressure back?

"I guess you're right. Souls can't just possess an empty human body, right?" Ichigo said with a laugh.

"…" Rukia twitched with a tick mark on her forehead at the reminder of that incident. "Actually Ichigo, they can. In fact, it's possible to possess a human even if there's another soul inside it."

Ichigo blinked. "Eh? So ghost possessions are real?"

Rukia took out a clipboard, paper, and crayon from nowhere, then started rapidly drawing diagrams.

"Yes. In theory, any soul without an externally manifested Soul Chain, or a broken one, can do it. Even Hollows. But it's a rather difficult skill, and fairly rare to see. A human body is much more resistant to possession than a gigai," she said, pointing to the cute rabbits she drew.

"What the hell?! I don't need such crappy drawings to understand that!" Ichigo's eyes turned white while he pointed up and down at the clipboard, several tick marks on his head.

Suddenly Uryu got in front of him, then leaned in to look the drawings carefully.

"I see. So this is how Kurosaki learns complex ideas," Uryu said, his glasses flashing as he adjusted them. "This is an excellent explanation, Kuchiki-san."

Rukia nodded seriously. "Thank you, Ishida-san. Ichigo is too block-headed to learn any other way."

Ichigo turned chibi with a square head and crouched in the corner of the room with a dark cloud of gloom over him, wavy vertical lines under his squinted rectangular eyes.

O O O

**A/N: **It's been a while, but I'm back in the mood for some Bleach.

I'm a surprised at the amount of positive feedback on this story. I thought the fandom as a whole was much less active now. Is it because of the return of the Bleach anime, or the new Burn the Witch stuff?


	8. Chapter 8

**8 – Scattering Spirit**

Spirit particles sparked as two Heilig Klinge clashed.

Ichigo and Gesshokuro engaged in a furious melee, both using Wogenschritt liberally and repeatedly disappearing only to reappear in the other's blind spots.

Ichigo shifted the Heilig Klinge into a broader, thicker form as he slashed down with both hands.

Gesshokuro blocked it with one hand, using the other to hold the flat of the blade as support.

"Rrraahh!" Ichigo growled and exerted his strength to put more pressure on Gesshokuro, but was forced back when the older man flicked his arm.

Then Ichigo instantly formed a Bogen, reshaping the Klinge into a more slender form to fire it as an arrow.

Gesshokuro slashed towards the incoming projectile and stopped it in its tracks even as it pushed him back a little.

With another flick, he parried it away and disappeared.

Ichigo sensed the coming strike behind him, and without turning formed another sword to block over his head just in time.

Still holding down his sword against Ichigo's, Gesshokuro formed a second Klinge to slash from the side.

Ichigo formed a second Klinge of his own, blocking again.

Another furious melee ensued as both of them fought with two swords, until Gesshokuro merged his swords and formed a long spear.

With a quick step back and then a twist, Gesshokuro used the extra reach to seize the advantage, then slammed Ichigo in the abdomen, sending him flying.

The spear was reshaped into a bow, and he unleashed a large wave of arrows.

Ichigo rapidly blocked the incoming arrows with his swords but couldn't get all of them.

"Guh!"

He was soon pierced in multiple places and admitted defeat.

"This isn't good enough, Old Man Gesshokuro. I'm not getting stronger fast enough," Ichigo said, breathing heavily with his Heilig Klinge stabbed onto the sideways skyscraper of his Inner World, even as he broke apart the Pfeil that was sticking out of him and healed himself.

The old man stood only a short distance away, having reformed a Heilig Klinge from the Bogen and rushed in to melee range again.

"You are growing very quickly, Ichigo," said Gesshokuro.

"But I'm running out of time. I'm not even close to being a match for Rukia's Shikai right now. I know she's strong, but our enemies are even stronger," Ichigo said.

After a few weeks of intensive training with Gesshokuro, Rukia, and somewhat less intensive training with Ishida, Ichigo could finally say that he couldn't doubt the power of Quincy techniques anymore.

It wasn't any less powerful than his old Shikai, that was for sure.

The Heilig Klinge could be made relatively quickly and reformed at will, unlike a zanpaktou that could be damaged.

Although it wasn't quite as strong in terms of sheer cutting power or resilience, the fact that he could simply make more, suddenly dual wield, just throw it, or fire it as an arrow with minor modification, was a big tactical advantage.

His ranged capability was also much more versatile compared to Getsuga Tenshou, even before considering Kido.

Compared to his dream self, who had barely a week of training under Urahara before invading Soul Society, he was far ahead.

But even so, it wasn't enough.

In his dreams, how many times did he almost die, surviving by a hair's breadth?

Even if he could defeat Renji without much trouble when they came to get Rukia, would it make any difference against Byakuya?

Then there were people like Kenpachi…whom he had been wary of battling again long after he achieved Bankai.

Could he even cut Kenpachi this time around, without Zangetsu?

And, this time he couldn't bring his friends into it either.

He didn't really understand how he could have been okay with his friends joining his invasion of Soul Society in the first place, but now that he had a better relationship with Ishida, the hollow bait incident wouldn't happen.

And meant that Chad's and Orihime's powers wouldn't finish developing.

There was no way he could bring them into the spiritual world when they were just normal humans with a small bit of spiritual awareness but otherwise powerless. Especially with Orihime later becoming a target for Aizen. Having access to her healing was nice, but he'd learned healing techniques of his own now, he didn't have to put her at risk.

So he had maybe weeks or days left to get strong enough to take on Byakuya, or otherwise be forced to try and rescue Rukia from Soul Society, which would be even harder.

Although it was possible that things wouldn't go the same way as in the vision—how did they find out about Rukia having transferred her power to him anyway, if Saido didn't report it?—nevertheless, he had to face the very real possibility that a battle against a captain level fighter was just around the corner.

After a long silence, Gesshokuro finally spoke up again, drawing him out of his thoughts.

"Ichigo, I can feel that you are frustrated. But to have come this far in only a month is remarkable. Just what kind of enemies are you expecting to face in the near future?" Gesshokuro asked.

"I might be a decent match for the likes of Renji or the other vice-captains, but against Captains, I'd have no chance. They're going to come for Rukia soon, and one of them is a captain, Byakuya Kuchiki, Rukia's brother. In my dream, I couldn't even see him move. I didn't have Shikai yet, but still. Vice-Captains and Captains are limited to 20% of their power when they come to the human world, and he was still that much stronger," said Ichigo.

"Compared to when you were using Sode no Shirayuki's unreleased blade, you are much stronger now. Your Quincy powers will also be even stronger in Soul Society, with the spirit particle-rich environment. You are facing as much a handicap as they are in the Human World," said Gesshokuro.

"But they can just request permission to release their limiter. And even when I fought Byakuya two weeks later in Soul Society, I wouldn't have stood a chance without Bankai. Actually, even with Bankai, I almost lost until my Hollow took over. But honestly? I can't afford to let them take Rukia back into Soul Society. I had no choice last time but to invade Soul Society, but I know that trying to go up against the entire Gotei 13 is suicidal."

"Ichigo, it takes decades for Shinigami to achieve Bankai. Even if it was an incomplete form you achieved with me as Zangetsu, to achieve it mere weeks after attaining Shikai is simply impossible."

"But I had to do it, and I did. It was through a special method invented by Urahara, though."

Another long silence followed as Gesshokuro seemed to be deep in thought.

"Old man Gesshokuro, what can Quincies do to match Bankai anyway?"

Gesshokuro gave him a measured look. "There is a Quincy technique that will boost your strength in a manner that is similar to Bankai. However, it is also impossible for you right now."

Ichigo swore. "Is there really no way for me to get to that level of strength in time as a Quincy? Can't we just do what we did in my dreams, with Zangetsu?"

"That cannot be done if you wish to retain your Quincy powers. As I explained before, Quincy and Hollow natures are incompatible."

"Why not? I learned how to suppress my inner Hollow eventually. I'm sure I can do it again."

"Ichigo, you still don't understand. The Hollow _is_ your zanpaktou. Suppressing it is the same as suppressing your zanpaktou, and you would be no better off."

"Then what if I switched powers temporarily, and use Zangetsu to get through the next few battles until Aizen reveals himself? I won't lose my Quincy powers completely, right? I could suppress the Hollow again, then keep training Quincy powers after that."

Ichigo thought that maybe Gesshokuro was letting his desire for Ichigo to use Quincy powers overcome his sense of urgency. It wasn't that Ichigo didn't want to train his Quincy powers, or didn't understood that his potential as a Quincy might be greater, it was just that he needed strength _now_.

"That is not an option either, Ichigo. As I told you and Sode no Shirayuki, there is already another spirit pressure, a seal, suppressing the Hollow, and it is very strong. We cannot release the Hollow even if you wanted to."

"Wait, wait, what do you mean? I'm sorry, I must have missed that part before. There's a seal suppressing the Hollow? It's not you that's doing it?"

Ichigo looked very confused now.

"That is correct. I do not know how you managed to release it in your dreams, but it is currently impossible until your Quincy powers advance to a much higher level. I suspect the seal broke when you died and your soul began to Hollowfy, as you described to Rukia. That is far too risky to attempt, and I will not support this course of action."

Ichigo groaned. He shouldn't have doubted the old man in the first place. Of course there had been a good reason that Gesshokuro urged him to use Quincy powers. Ichigo had to agree that letting himself die and face full Hollowfication was too risky to try, especially when they didn't even know if that was really what broke the seal. He didn't even know where the Hollow came from or who put the damn seal on him!

"…then what _can_ we do?" Ichigo asked in a defeated tone.

Gesshokuro dissolved his Heilig Klinge, signifying an end to their training session.

"Ichigo, although I did not want to start on this so early, there is a way to speed up your development as a Quincy. However, you will need to enter your spirit form and train in the real world," he said.

Ichigo turned excited again. "I knew I could count on you, Old Man!"

O O O

After quietly getting into his spirit form and leaving the house in the dead of night, Ichigo set out to find a place to train.

He went back to the mountain area near Karasu river, but with the high speed movement technique Wogenschritt, this time he went even further away from town.

Gesshokuro had warned him that this training could cause Hollows to be attracted to his area, so he had make sure he went far enough that none of them would go into Karakura.

Eventually, he came to a stop, in the deep forest.

'_So, what do I do, old man?'_ He asked mentally.

'_You will release your Shinigami spirit pressure while simultaneously training in Quincy techniques. As a Quincy, your spirit pressure naturally gathers spirit particles, but as a Shinigami or Hollow, it scatters spirit particles instead. Other Quincies do this same training with a specialized tool known as the Sanrei Glove. The scattering of spirit particles, or the Sanrei exercise, increases the difficulty of manipulating spirit particles, thereby allowing you to achieve a higher skill in it. When you return to a regular environment, your powers will then be far stronger, an effect similar to taking off training weights.'_

Ichigo followed the instructions and started to draw up his Shinigami spirit pressure. A blue aura surrounded him, and he felt the spirit particles start to scatter around him.

Next he tried to gather spirit particles to form a Heilig Bogen, and found it incredibly hard. It was worse than when he first started practicing it.

'_Woah. Why didn't we do this earlier? Why did you have me suppress my Shinigami spirit pressure instead, to make it easier to manipulate spirit particles?'_

'_Basics come first Ichigo. You needed to learn to separate and manage your Shinigami and Quincy spirit pressures, and you needed to learn how to manipulate spirit particles under normal circumstances._'

While struggling to form the Bogen, Ichigo asked another question.

'_So now that I've started this training, does that mean I don't need to suppress my Shinigami spirit pressure anymore? Couldn't I do this during the day as well? I mean there will be more Hollows, but it shouldn't be any worse than before when I couldn't control my spirit pressure at all, right?'_

'_**No**__,' _Gesshokuro transmitted with a strong emphasis._ 'You must not do the Sanrei exercise too much. You need rest in between, otherwise your Quincy power will permanently adjust to compensate. This is not a good thing, because when you eventually stop the exercise or need to suppress your Shinigami spirit pressure again at any point, your Quincy powers will enter a short period of uncontrollable hypersensitivity before sealing themselves off to prevent damage to your soul. This is known as Letzt Stile, and it is a last-resort technique that some Quincies deliberately invoke by keeping the Sanrei Glove on for prolonged periods, then taking it off. You would obtain a tremendous power like that of Bankai, but you will lose your Quincy powers immediately afterward, and will not be able to regain them without a risky procedure and assistance from other Quincies.'_

'_Like Bankai? Is that the technique you mentioned earlier?'_

'_The Letzt Stile is a shortcut method with a severe drawback. You can eventually achieve the same state with enough training, using a different technique without that drawback.'_

'_Got it._'

Not long after he started training in earnest, a Hollow appeared and attacked.

It was a weak Hollow, but this time Gesshokuro instructed Ichigo to maintain the Sanrei exercise while fighting them with Quincy techniques, making it a tremendous struggle, as he couldn't even use Wogenschritt, and his Bogen failed after a single shot.

'_Old man, this is crazy! I can't fight like this!' _Ichigo thought with alarm.

He ran and barely dodged a claw from the monkey-like hollow.

He made another attempt to form a Heilig Bogen while the Hollow roared in anger.

Before he could complete it, his concentration failed and the Bogen collapsed. A lunge from the Hollow hit him this time, pinning him to the ground.

"Arggh! Damn it! Go to hell!" Ichigo screamed and released even more Shinigami spirit pressure instinctively, as if he were a Shinigami again. It blew away the Hollow for a moment, but then Ichigo realized he had just made it even harder to gather spirit particles.

He got up and ran again while trying to suppress his Shinigami spirit pressure again, but suddenly found that quite difficult too as if it was a tap that once turned on, refused to shut off.

He had kept his Shinigami spirit pressure suppressed for so long, even while using Kido—no, _especially_ while using Kido to make sure the spells didn't explode prematurely—that it was going wild after he allowed himself to release it again.

"Fuck!"

The Hollow quickly caught up to him, and he was forced to use a Shinigami Flash Step to escape.

Another few Flash Steps got Ichigo behind the Hollow, then he started incanting with his palms outstretched, visible concentration his face that was very unlike the ease with which he had been casting Kido over the past few days while hunting Hollows with Rukia.

"O Lord, mask of skin and blood, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of man, light and firmament, the veil of earth is torn, pierce the endless sky with your shining fist! Hado #32: Okasen!"

An arc of golden light surged forth, and with his Shinigami spirit pressure unrestrained, it was impossible to aim but was so large that it completely covered the Hollow and everything around it.

Once it was over, Ichigo got down on his knees panting. There was no trace of the Hollow left, and a big gorge was left on the ground, along with numerous toppled trees.

It was almost like firing a Getsuga Tenshou, which is why he liked that particular Hado so much.

'_This is why I did not want to start you on this exercise until later, Ichigo. You need much more practice at controlling your spirit pressure,_' Gesshokuro spoke in his mind.

"Ugh…damn," Ichigo cursed before sitting in a meditative position to get his spirit pressure back under control and continue the Sanrei exercise. "There's no choice. If I want to get strong enough in time, then I just have to tough through this."

O O O

When Ichigo finally got back home after hours of training, he found Rukia sitting at his desk, wide awake and looking upset.

Before he had a chance to make up an excuse for why he was missing, Rukia glared and started lecturing him.

"You're pushing yourself too hard Ichigo. We're already training every single day. You don't need to exhaust yourself at night too. Soul Society isn't going to come after me until they have evidence that I committed treason, and they also have to find me first. So why are you acting like this?"

"I was just getting some air—" He tried to lie, but was cut off.

"Don't try to deny it, Gesshokuro told Sode no Shirayuki what you were up to. Did you forget that she can go into your Inner World?"

"Oh…damn," Ichigo cursed quietly.

"I understand how you feel, but this is excessive. You're already really strong Ichigo. Stronger than I could've ever imagined considering how little time you've had to train with your powers. You have to take care of yourself too. Please," said Rukia.

"I'm sorry, Rukia. I just have a bad feeling…I don't think we have that much time. The more I think about it, the more I feel that it wasn't just because of the hollow bait contest I had with Ishida that caused Soul Society to find out about you in my dreams. It's true that the Menos definitely would have attracted attention, but knowing Aizen, he probably had a hand in things. I just can't imagine that he would sit and do nothing if Soul Society doesn't find you," said Ichigo.

In the sequence of events from his visions, Renji and Byakuya had come to take Rukia the very day after he and Ishida defeated the Menos. Although it seemed like a clear cause and effect relationship, in which Soul Society's surveillance must have caught Rukia near the scene and witnessed Ichigo's Shinigami powers, he couldn't shake the feeling that Aizen orchestrated it deliberately.

The fact was that Aizen did have control of Menos—that was how he escaped from Soul Society after his big reveal. It wasn't much of a stretch to think that he set things up for the Menos to appear, rather than it just being attracted by the Hollow bait. Ishida didn't know about the Menos either, like he didn't realize Hollow bait could attract such a thing.

"You're being paranoid, Ichigo. I have my powers again so you aren't fighting alone. You also don't look like a Shinigami anymore. That means there's no proof of my crime. Even if they try to bring me back, it shouldn't be a vice-captain or Captain. We can handle anybody else," said Rukia.

Ichigo looked down. "Alright, I won't train this late anymore. I really hope you're right Rukia…"

O O O

**A/N: **Thanks for all the reviews! I hope this story continues to live up to expectations.

**Discord: **Got ideas for the story? Just want to chat? Come join us on Discord here: ZyxZPRm


	9. Chapter 9

**9 – Karakura Protectors**

Ichigo glanced at the calendar. '_July 15, today's the day Kanonji comes to Karakura._'

As he headed down to help out with making breakfast, he heard his little sister Yuzu, his dad, and Rukia all making the signature "BOAHAHAHA" laugh.

"Onii-chan! Mr. Kanonji's Ghost Bust is tonight! You're coming with us, right?!" Yuzu ran over to him excitedly.

"Ah, yeah, sure," said Ichigo. He saw his other little sister drinking milk with a bored expression.

"Yay!" Yuzu then went over to Karin and announced that their brother was coming, even though Karin saw and heard them.

'_If things go like they did in my dreams, there'll be a demi-Hollow there…and I need to stop Kanonji from causing Pluses to become Hollows in the future,'_ thought Ichigo.

He noticed Karin staring at him again, just like she did last week when this week's Don Kanonji Ghost Bust location was announced.

They'd had a conversation then about why Karin didn't care too much about the show.

She could see spirits just like Ichigo himself. Their family had known that for a long time, and Karin did see the Hollow that attacked their family, so he suspected that Karin knew about his activities with Rukia, but she'd never said anything.

And as long as she didn't, he didn't see a need to bring it up. He didn't want to drag her into the affairs of the spiritual world, and he figured that she understood why he never talked about it.

Like this, Ichigo and Karin quietly had their breakfast while the other three members of their family, including Rukia, loudly talked about the upcoming show.

O O O

"There's actually an earthbound spirit here…" said Rukia.

"Yeah, I know. And it's already progressed to being demi-Hollow. Kanonji's going to make it turn full Hollow by accident," said Ichigo.

"You dreamed about this too?" Rukia asked. He nodded in response.

They were a short distance behind the crowd that had gathered to watch the live show at the old abandoned hospital building. Isshin, Yuzu, and Karin were farther ahead where the crowd was.

"Why didn't you give it a Soul Burial sooner, then? We can't do it with all these people here, especially if it struggles," said Rukia.

"Because Kanonji's been doing this in other places too, opening Hollow holes in these spirits. He needs to see that he's not helping," said Ichigo.

"What an idiot. How did he not get eaten by a transformed Hollow yet?"

"I haven't got a clue."

At that point, some of their friends from school started to show up, the two stealthily left to watch from further away, getting on to a nearby rooftop.

Once the show started, things progressed as Ichigo predicted. When the demi-Hollow started to wail as Kanonji messed with its Hollow hole, Ichigo noticed Karin blocking her ears apparently in pain.

With his spirit pressure sensing much improved, he quickly found his friends among the crowd and noticed that Chad, Orihime, and Tatsuki all seemed similarly disturbed, but not to the extent that Karin was.

'_Tatsuki too? I don't remember her being spiritually aware…never mind, it doesn't matter. I won't drag any of them into the spiritual world.'_

"Rukia…I'm going," he said. "I'll need to be in spirit form for this, so that I won't be seen."

Rukia voiced her assent, then used the soul capture glove on him, catching his body as it fell.

O O O

Ichigo in his Quincy spirit form appeared next to Kanonji, then shoved him aside.

"Do you have any idea what you're doing, you idiot? That's not going to send him to heaven. You're going to cause him to turn Hollow," he said, standing over the downed Kanonji. The TV broadcaster shouted about the invisible force that knocked the star down.

"Boy, what's with you? Why are you interfering? You're just a ghost!" Kanonji said as he got up.

'_Déjà vu…'_

But this time Ichigo was on a completely different level. He released some of his spirit pressure.

Suddenly Kanonji choked before he could say anything else and dropped to his knees. A wave of unease swept through the whole crowd, but Ichigo's spirit pressure also stopped the demi-Hollow's spirit pressure from negatively affecting Karin and his friends.

"B-boy, you're no ordinary ghost!" Kanonji said after struggling back up.

"You got that right. I'm here to stop you from making more mistakes in the future. Listen up, Kanonji—"

"Are you also an evil spirit?! The great spirit medium of the century will exorcise you!" Kanonji made a pose.

Ichigo's face twitched. Then he focused even more of his spirit pressure onto Kanonji, sending him crashing down to the floor again.

Kanonji quietly whimpered as Ichigo grabbed him by the cuff.

"Shut the hell up and listen to me! You need to stop messing with the holes and chains of these spirits! Normal spirits have a chain attached to their chest. When a hole opens and they lose the chain, they lose their minds too and turn into monsters called Hollows. What you've just done to that spirit is speed up the process. Watch!" Ichigo pointed to the spirit, who was just about to completely hollowfy.

It screamed and clutched at its chest as its wails turned even more terrible, then suddenly it spasmed and there was a flash of light, leaving nothing but air when the light died down.

"You're w-wrong boy! I-I sent it to heaven!" Don Kanonji said with a struggle. "Mission Complete!"

"No you haven't, look up. It's reforming into a monster now," Ichigo pointed up, and also let up on his spirit pressure.

Don Kanonji followed his finger to see the Hollow forming limbs, a chest, a head, and then a mask over it.

"Wh-what is that monster?!" He cried.

"That's a Hollow, formed from the spirit you just messed with."

"No way!"

"And now it's going to come after us because it's hungry for spiritual energy, and we've got it," Ichigo said. True to his words, the Hollow jumped down straight towards them.

Ichigo dragged Kanonji into the abandoned hospital building. What followed was a chase that Ichigo deliberately allowed, so that Kanonji could save face by seemingly having an epic battle with an "invisible monster".

At the end of it, they were on the rooftop, and Ichigo pinned the Hollow's head down onto the floor from behind using his bare hands, right in front of Kanonji.

"Now look closely, and see for yourself that this is the same spirit you thought you sent to heaven," he said, pointing two fingers at the Hollow's head. "Hado #4: Byakurai."

From his fingers a concentrated beam of electricity was released that punched through the head of the Hollow and broke its mask.

When the Hollow was revealed to be the human spirit, Don Kanonji fell on his knees in shock.

"What have I been doing all this time…?"

O O O

After Ichigo returned to his body, the two of them went to find the Kurosaki family again.

Suddenly Rukia tugged on Ichigo's sleeve. "Look, it's Urahara."

"Huh? Oh you're right." Ichigo glanced over and saw the shopkeeper together with the two kid assistants he had.

'_Was he supposed to be here? I can't remember,' _Ichigo thought. '_Damn, he must've have seen me in my spirit form without the Shinigami robes just now. I didn't use any Quincy techniques, and I don't really look like a traditional Quincy either…but will he figure out that I already gave Rukia's powers back to her?_'

Shortly after, they saw Urahara approaching, fanning himself as he walked. "Why hello there, Kurosaki-san, Kuchiki-san! Fancy meeting you here. Are you fans of Mr. Don Kanonji too?"

"Why are you in this sort of place, Urahara? Are you scheming something?" Rukia asked with a look of suspicion.

"Not at all! These kids love this show, so I had no choice but to come out here," Urahara said, gesturing to his young assistants, who peeked out from behind him.

"Right…" Rukia said with obvious doubt.

"By the way, Kurosaki-san, you looked quite dashing today in those new fashionable Western clothes. But I wonder what happened to your Zanpaktou?" Urahara asked.

'_Is he digging for information or just pretending he doesn't know yet?'_

"I must have lost it somewhere. I can't find it," Ichigo said unashamedly. Rukia sweatdropped.

"Oh my, you lost a huge sword like that?" Urahara put his fan over the bottom half of his face. "Do you perhaps need a new one? I do have some in stock if you need a replacement, but they're not quite as impressively large."

'_What the…? Is he talking about blank Asauchi? Shit, why didn't I ever think to ask him about that? Oh right, didn't want him to find out about Rukia's powers._'

"You have replacement Zanpaktou?" Ichigo asked with a fake confused expression.

"Not quite, Kurosaki-san. They are called Asauchi, until a Shinigami puts their own spirit pressure in it and makes it their own. It's a common training tool for Shinigami."

Ichigo's face turned contemplative.

'_Hey, Old man Gesshokuro, if I get an actual Asauchi, can we achieve a Shikai and Bankai without breaking the seal on the Hollow?_'

Gesshokuro's deep voice answered after a moment. _'Yes, I believe we can._'

"Seriously? Yeah, I think I'd like to get one then," said Ichigo.

"Come by my shop later then! It's on the house. My thanks for doing a great job keeping the town safe. I'm a resident too, after all! Good bye!" Urahara started fanning himself as he walked away with a laugh.

"Thanks! See you later, Hat 'n' Clogs!"

Ichigo and Rukia went back to searching for the Kurosaki family.

"It's illegal to have Asauchi outside of Soul Society other than the Shinigami's own Zanpaktou…and the illegal mod souls…there were so many hints that he was fishy, I can't believe I just ignored them all until you told me the truth about him," said Rukia.

"Do you think he knows?" Ichigo said, putting his hands casually behind his head.

"I don't know…but I think he suspects, at the very least. If I were him, I'd have a way to monitor any changes in my spirit pressure," said Rukia. "And he is very skilled in hiding his own spirit energy signature. I wouldn't be surprised if he's been stalking us the whole time."

"At least he can still be useful sometimes. As much as I like my Quincy powers now, I miss having a Zanpaktou," said Ichigo.

O O O

The next day, Ichigo and Rukia were in the middle of training after school, which they started to do in the real world on the outskirts of Karakura so Ichigo could do the Sanrei exercise, when Ichigo sensed a Hollow in town.

He woke Rukia who was training through Jinzen, then they rushed back into Karakura proper to chase after the Hollow.

Because Ichigo hadn't built enough of a connection with his new Asauchi, he had to carry it physically with him, even though it wasn't visible to ordinary humans. It looked as though his hand was clasped around empty air as the two of them ran.

Just before they arrived, the Hollow spirit pressure disappeared. They shared a look, both thinking that Ishida was responsible and preparing to give him a lecture about not destroying Hollows when the two of them were around and willing to work with him, but when they arrived, they saw a Shinigami standing in the empty street where they sensed the Hollow signature.

He was wearing a familiar straw hat. It was Saido Eikichiro, the Shinigami who had been sent after Rukia a month ago when they fought Grand Fisher.

Ichigo tensed and his hand went to his sword handle, momentarily losing his focus with suppressing his spirit pressure.

It was noticed by the other Shinigami, who turned and tipped his hat up.

"Mah…no need to be so tense, lovebirds. I'm not here to fight," said Saido, raising his hands in a peace gesture.

"Hello Saido-san, what brings you to Karakura town again?" Rukia asked.

"I was assigned to patrol over in Kagamino City east of here, and thought I'd stop by to say hello!" He waved and grinned. Then he face turned serious. "And to give you two a warning."

Ichigo and Rukia shared a knowing look.

"Thank you for stopping by, Saido-san. It is good to see that you are well. What is this warning you speak of?" Rukia asked politely.

"You've probably already guessed it, haven't you? It's been a month since I reported in and you still haven't returned to Soul Society. Onmitsukido is trying to investigate you again. I managed to get out of taking the mission, but they know I found you in Karakura town, and this is where you were assigned for your original mission. They'll just send someone else, maybe the agents from Executive Militia—I'm from Patrol Corps in case you couldn't tell by my normal shihakusho—and those ninja guys aren't going to listen to your reasons. Kuchiki-san, I don't know why you're still here, but if you're really intent on pursuing a serious relationship with this human and not just a temporary little fling, you might want to consider eloping a bit farther away from here, like the next country over," Saido said with a completely straight face.

Ichigo and Rukia both blushed, and hurriedly stammered out denials that they were in any romantic relationship.

Saido laughed and waved them off. "I don't care what you want to call it. Point is, you'd better watch out."

Rukia bowed and thanked him in a formal manner. Ichigo gave his own thanks more casually.

"Well, that's all I wanted to say, catch you later, lovebirds!"

Saido was just turning to leave when Rukia called after him.

"Wait! Saido-san, do you know what's going on in my division? Why is Onmitsukido coming after me instead of Division 13?"

"Eh, I don't know. I haven't talked to anybody in your Division. All I know is that the higher ups in Onmitsukido suspect you've committed a more serious crime," Saido said, giving Ichigo a meaningful look. He turned back to Rukia. "But then again, it could also be the Kuchiki clan's influence, trying to eliminate a potential scandal quietly."

Rukia's eyes widened, before darting to Ichigo. She understood the implication easily, but Ichigo didn't look like it he got the significance of Saido's statement.

If the Kuchiki clan was trying to quietly "eliminate" a scandal, it could only mean to kill whomever they believed had seduced Rukia into dishonoring the Kuchiki clan name—namely, Ichigo.

She thought her brother wouldn't resort to such methods without at least having the decency to confront and punish her first, but maybe she was wrong, or maybe the clan elders were too angry that the adopted commoner was yet again bringing dishonor to the clan.

Once again, she thanked Saido for the tip, and together with Ichigo, they prepared to return to their training.

However soon after Saido left, they felt another Hollow presence.

This time, there was nobody else there, and Ichigo quickly slashed it in half with his Asauchi.

The two of them started to go back to their training spot, only to stop again when a third Hollow was detected.

After that one was also dealt with, both of them started feeling uneasy. Three Hollows in quick succession like that was abnormal.

Their feeling was vindicated when the fourth Hollow appeared. And then a fifth Hollow before they even got there.

"What the hell?! Shit, was Hollow bait released? Why is this happening?!" Ichigo shouted as they rushed to deal with the next two Hollows, moving with Flash Step.

Very soon, more and more Hollow signatures appeared all over the town.

"This is bad! We should split up to purify them faster!" Rukia shouted.

'_No! This isn't possible! Why are things going the same way as my dream? Ishida shouldn't have released any Hollow bait this time!' _Ichigo had been sensing Uryu's spirit pressure and it was clear that he had only just started to fight when the Hollows numbers grew dangerously high. He had been honoring their agreement to let Ichigo and Rukia handle the Hollows whenever possible, until he deemed it necessary to act because there were too many.

Even now, Ishida wasn't using killing blows yet. Otherwise, Ichigo knew the other Quincy could wipe out all of the Hollows instantly from a single position by unleashing a massive barrage of arrows.

Ichigo shouted his agreement to Rukia, then the two of them rushed in different directions.

Over the last month, having stayed in a human body for so long, Rukia had managed to learn how to use Flash Step and manifest her Zanpaktou without going into spirit form.

To minimize the chances of attracting the wrong attention from Soul Society, she continued to stay in her body rather than going into spirit form.

With a few rapid flash steps, she appeared in front of a Hollow and slashed down, Sode no Shirayuki appearing midway through the slash. Then she immediately dashed off again to hunt the next Hollow.

After killing three more Hollows, she realized that the number of Hollows appearing in Karakura town was still increasing.

And some of them were getting close to her spiritually aware friends.

While she was trying to decide which way to go next, she felt a huge release of spirit pressure from Ichigo.

It was like a beacon that suddenly caused all the Hollows in town to swarm in that direction, leaving their original targets.

'_He's trying to lure all the Hollows to himself!'_ Rukia moved that way as well after she understood Ichigo's intention.

When she arrived, it was to see Ichigo in an empty park, surrounded by over twenty Hollows, and even more still coming. The sky seemed to be filled with Hollows from every direction.

Like Rukia, Uryu had also rushed over, and was firing crippling but non-fatal blows with his arrows, so that Ichigo could purify them.

She quickly entered the fight and started hacking at Hollows left and right.

O O O

**A/N: **

Had a number of people say they didn't like the manga/anime conventions used for humor a few chapters ago. Well, it won't pop up often, but I'm not removing them. Not only did a bunch of readers like it, it's something that reminds me of the early Bleach. I never liked it all that much the first time around either, but it's a part of the "Bleach" vibe and now I appreciate it being there.

The guys that are leaving Spanish reviews, I'm gtranslating and appreciate the positive feedback, but I won't be responding directly to non-English reviews.

Allhailthesith: I'm that just because Rukia said so doesn't mean she's right. These aren't normal circumstances, and Central 46 isn't operating normally either. If you think that's BS, then there's nothing I can do about it.

Exodus12345: Sorry, this is a bit of rant, and includes some stuff you may consider as spoilers. Personally, I think it's all deducible from canon, but YMMV.

No, his Quincy side isn't holding him back. He never lied and still hasn't, and Gesshokuro is not only his "Quincy" side either. It's the half of his Zanpaktou which represents his Quincy powers.

A normal Quincy wouldn't have a Quincy inner spirit, or be capable of suppressing their own Quincy powers to avoid Soul Suicide the way Ichigo's spirit can. His Shinigami powers are not a balancer. If that was true, then Masaki would've been able to keep using her Quincy powers after Isshin suppressed them with his Shinigami powers. Similarly, the Wandenreich would have been able to use the sealed Bankais even with the Hollow spirit pressure in them, if the Bankai could "balance" out the Hollow spirit pressure poison that Urahara invented. But it doesn't work that way. It has never been shown that Shinigami spirit pressure balances Quincy and Hollow, only that Quincy spirit pressure can stabilize Shinigami/Hollow hybrids (and then it's not required after the initial stabilization).

Quincy and Hollow natures are not opposites-it's Shinigami and Hollow powers that are opposites, as strongly Plus or Negative souls. Quincies are neither Pluses or Negatives, but something else entirely. Being a hybrid doesn't automatically make an entity stronger either, and it won't make Ichigo stronger to use all three. If it did, Aizen would have hollowfied himself and Gin. All it does is allow the entity to access powers from the other side of the spectrum, which is why Resurrecion is just a reversion back to the Hollow's pure Hollow state, not a hybrid form. The only reason Ichigo got apparently stronger when Hollowfied is because his Hollow was actually his true Zanpaktou, and his Shikai/Bankai were fake. That's why he didn't need to Hollowfy again to unlock his full power after the reforging, why the Vizard captains still got wrecked easily against foes that Rukia and Renji defeated after their Zero Squad training, and why Ichigo's own pure Hollow Resurrecion in the Ulqiuorra fight was way stronger than his Shinigami-Hollow hybrid forms. Finally, his "Final Getsuga Tenshou" follows the same trend, but how that works is a spoiler even for this story so I can't explain it now. Whether you agree with my interpretation of canon or not, in this story Ichigo is not an exception to the Quincy-Hollow incompatibility, or to Quincy-Shinigami incompatibility, which expresses itself in a different way than direct Soul Suicide (which has already been slightly explored with how Plus and Negative spirit pressures both scatter spirit particles).

Kaiya Azure: All very possible reasons.

Doctor Dandy: Of course it doesn't. The things which caused it never happened in canon. It's a significant plot point for this story, even aside from the fact that Rukia isn't weak at all. If anything, Rukia's canon feats prove that she can be comparable in Shikai to a Captain when she is sufficiently motivated (defeating Aaroniero solo), and her eventual Bankai puts her above almost all the Captains.

Guest: Regarding the brave souls, I don't know what's special about it, so the answer is no, for now. None of them seem to be using their Quincy powers.

Thanks to everyone for reviewing!


	10. Chapter 10

**10 – Karakura Protectors 2**

After several minutes of fierce fighting, the three of them had found a rhythm that was working well.

Uryu was skillfully shooting a large number of arrows, while Ichigo and Rukia were able to quickly flash around to purify the weakened Hollows with their swords.

However, the Hollows continued to come relentlessly. The spirit pressures the combatants were releasing had seemingly attracted even more Hollows to come, and soon they were surrounded yet again.

'_Shit, we can't keep up with this, there's too many! At this rate, Ishida and I will have to start obliterating them with Quincy powers!'_ Ichigo thought while he was limiting himself to using Shinigami powers.

Just as Ichigo was thinking that, he heard Rukia start an unfamiliar incantation.

"Scattered Beast Bones! Spire, Crimson Crystal, Steel Wheels! The wind if it moves, the sky if it stops, the tone of the spear striking fills the lone castle! Hado #63: Raikoukou!"

He watched with awe as a massive beam of yellow energy was unleashed from Rukia's fingertips, and it tore through dozens of Hollows all at once, clearing half the field.

She had never used this level of Kido in their spars before, and he didn't really remember seeing her using the higher level Kido in his dreams either. If she could do that much in a human body, how powerful would it be if she was in Shinigami form? It made him feel like he needed to work even harder to catch up, or else it would be Rukia protecting him all over again.

Even Uryu looked impressed by the attack.

"Nice one Rukia!" Ichigo shouted before running his off hand over his Asauchi to launch his own Okasen. He decided to start using more Hado instead of going into melee, as they provided a good area attack, and he actually had an easier time using them in a human body than in spirit form because the living body naturally suppressed most of his Shinigami spirit pressure, and what he lacked was control, not power.

"What the hell is going on here? Why are there so many Hollows?" The voice of Saido Eikichiro reached their ears.

"Saido-san! We don't know! Can you help?!" Rukia shouted back.

"Of course!"

They saw Saido joining the fight.

Uryu got a dark look on his face. "Shinigami…" he muttered under his breath, seemingly shifting his bow in the direction of Saido.

Ichigo noticed and quickly shouted. "Not now, Ishida, he's helping us and we need to focus on protecting the town!"

"Tch!" Uryu continued to fire at the Hollows, agreeing that it was more important to protect their town.

"Woah! A Quincy!" Saido remarked as he saw the arrows of light. "I didn't know there were any left! Fabulous!"

Ishida's face twitched, but he ignored Saido.

With the addition of their fourth combatant, the battle was proceeding more comfortably again.

Then Ichigo saw a sight that made his heart stop.

Orihime and Chad had both made their way to the edge of the park from two separate directions, and were watching with wide eyes at the massive battle happening in front of them.

Chad looked like he wanted to contribute. He made a fist, glancing at it, before looking at the Hollows, the large flashes of light, the rain of arrows, and swords, and seemingly realized his fists wouldn't be able to accomplish anything here.

Ichigo cursed. '_Damn, why did they come here?! Did they follow the Hollows over?'_

Some Hollows also noticed and started to move in their direction. Because there were still more Hollows coming from farther away, they were soon surrounded as well.

Ichigo was alarmed and tried to get closer, but there were too many Hollows in the way. Then Rukia fired another Raikohou, clearing the path for him, and he got to Orihime just in time to protect her from a Hollow's bite.

With a quick motion, he grabbed her and Flash Stepped over to Chad's position. Chad was admirably fighting off a Hollow with his bare hands, but he was noticeably out of his league when the Hollow swiped at him and sent him crashing to the ground.

Ichigo grabbed him next and then rushed to Uryu's position, where the other Quincy could more effectively protect them as Uryu didn't need to move to fire his arrows.

"Damn it guys, you shouldn't have come here. Chad, this battle is way beyond you, and Inoue, you can't even fight right now!" Ichigo said with frustration. "Stay here with Ishida!"

"I-I'm sorry Kurosaki-kun," Orihime wilted under Ichigo's glare.

"I will follow your instructions, Ichigo," said Chad.

However, without Ichigo's presence, Rukia and Saido found themselves under a lot more pressure, and they were slowly being forced back towards Uryu as well.

"The Hollows are getting stronger!" Rukia shouted in warning when Ichigo rejoined the fight. Some of the later Hollows were noticeably more powerful than the earlier ones.

"Hold on for a moment! I'm going into spirit form!" Rukia announced and flashed over to Uryu. Then she swallowed a Gikon they'd bought from Urahara after visiting his shop to get Ichigo's Asauchi, and let the Chappy artificial soul take over her body.

"Damn!" Saido cursed when a Hollow wounded him in his leg, and he fell to his knee. Just before another Hollow landed a potentially fatal blow on him, Rukia released a tremendous wave of spirit pressure.

Saido's eyes widened as he sensed the power the Kuchiki princess was radiating, and the Hollow backed away in fear.

'_This is like a tenth or higher ranking seat's level! I thought she was supposed to be unseated?'_ Saido thought. He himself wasn't strong enough to be seated, and if he had tried to take her back by force last month, wouldn't he have been defeated easily if she stopped pretending to be a human and actually fought him? But how was that even possible? He had thought she had transferred her power to the human boy, but now it turned out she was just hiding it, and both of them had Shinigami powers! If Rukia had simply gotten her powers back, then the human boy should have lost them.

He was even more surprised when Rukia was matched by a similar spike in spirit pressure from the human and he was still in his living body. What's more, Saido saw that the boy's sword was still thin like a regular sealed Zanpaktou instead of that huge thing he had before, which without knowing the truth, implied to him that the boy was suppressing even more power!

Many Hollows seemed to be unnerved by the spirit pressure, and started to stay back. There was a moment of respite as the battle seemed to pause.

After a while, there was a clear separation between the stronger and weaker Hollows, as the weaker ones stayed behind the stronger ones.

"Saido-san, thank you for your help so far. You are wounded, so please stay back now," said Rukia.

Saido nodded and limped over to Uryu, only to be shocked again as he realized the Quincy's spirit pressure was similar to the other two's. It had been unnoticeable from a distance, but now that he was right next to the boy, it was very obvious. Never having met a Quincy before, he didn't realize that all Quincy spirit pressures were like this, naturally difficult to sense and easily masked by spirit particles.

Uryu gave him a hateful glare, and Saido returned a weak smile. "Ah, the war's been over for two hundred years, right? We're not enemies anymore."

The Quincy pointedly ignored his statement, and Saido decided to back away just a little, in case he was wrong about the war being over. He only knew about the Quincy eradication war from the history books, and didn't know any of them were alive, if they were planning revenge, or if Soul Society had any standing orders to ensure they stayed eradicated.

'_Oh shit…what if the war really isn't over, just continuing in secret? If I'm seen with this guy, will I be labeled a traitor? That would be worse than Kuchiki-san's crime of transferring powers to a human…shit! Could this be the real reason the higher ups didn't accept my report? If they knew there were Quincies hiding in Karakura town...and they suspected Kuchiki-san had defected…_' Saido's thoughts raced as he contemplated finding an opportunity to escape.

In the end, his honor won out and he decided that as a Shinigami, he simply couldn't run off before they dealt with the Hollows.

Suddenly, the Hollows all looked up towards the sky. Many of them started to make noises and clasp their forelimbs together as if they were praying.

"Ichigo…this is…" Rukia said uneasily as she looked up at the sky where the Hollows were gazing.

"Shit!" Ichigo cursed as he realized what was happening. '_Was this Aizen's doing after all?_'

The sky cracked and humongous fingers seemed to rip it apart from the other side.

A white mask emerged, revealing a titanic Hollow.

"What is that thing!" Uryu shouted. "That's a Hollow too?"

Saido's eyes were nearly popping out of their sockets as started to shake in fear. "M-m-menos G-grande!"

Chad and Orihime were similarly frozen in shock.

Overwhelming spirit pressure pressed down on all of them.

As if encouraged by the arrival of a famous general, the other Hollows all let out howls and looked like they were ready for action again.

From a distance, Urahara was watching the scene, together with his assistants.

"Should we help now?" the big bulky apron-wearing Tessai asked.

"Hmm…maybe we should wait a little longer. They don't seem to be in as much trouble as I'd thought," said Urahara.

"Aww, come on, I want to fight already!" said the boy assistant, Jinta, holding his big bat. His partner Ururu obediently stayed quiet, holding her cannon that was covered in seal paper.

Back with Ichigo and Rukia, the two of them shared a look.

"How do you want to handle this?" Ichigo asked.

"You and Uryu can take care of these small fry. I'll deal with the Menos," said Rukia after a short moment of contemplation. She had never actually fought a Menos before, as they were the jurisdiction of the elite among Shinigami. But she felt reasonably confident that she could win, after all the training she'd done with Ichigo over the past month, and his repeated claims about how strong she was in his dreams. In truth, the only reason she hadn't fought a Menos was because her rank wasn't high enough to be assigned to that kind of mission, but they both knew she was much stronger than her rank would suggest.

"But if you use that much spirit pressure, Soul Society—"

"It's fine Ichigo. Like Saido-san said, they already know where I am. They're coming for me no matter what. You, on the other hand, shouldn't use too much power here. Soul Society knows what I can do, but they don't know what you can do," said Rukia, referring to the true strength of Ichigo's Quincy powers, which they'd agreed should be best kept hidden from Soul Society and especially Aizen for as long as possible. While his Quincy nature would be impossible to hide for long, just as Shinigami didn't release their Shikai and Bankai without a clear need, it was better to keep trump cards hidden until they were needed.

"Alright," Ichigo said, then turned to shout towards Uryu. "Hey, Uryu! We need to deal with these other Hollows while Rukia fights the big-ass Menos!"

Orihime noticed that Ichigo called Rukia by her first name while the other girl was in earshot. They were so close! Were they really not dating as Rukia denied before?

Uryu nodded his agreement, then adjusted his glasses. His spirit bow elongated, as if he was preparing to take this even more seriously than before.

Then his face twitched. "When did I give you permission to use my first name, Kurosaki!"

"Thanks, Uryu! Make sure Orihime and Chad are safe!" Rukia also shouted using his first name, ignoring Uryu's complaint.

"You too, Kuchiki?! I thought you were the polite one!"

Orihime watched the exchange with a sweatdrop. It seemed Rukia was a lot less polite when not around their other school friends.

Soon the battle resumed in earnest.

Rukia flash stepped into the air towards the Menos, while Ichigo started chanting another Okasen.

Uryu concentrated and a large amount of spirit particles gathered towards his bow.

The prior battle made the area very rich in spirit particles and energy that he could use.

Then he unleashed a massive wave of arrows. Hundreds of arrows flew across the sky, each one dealing a severe wound to a Hollow.

Unfortunately a few of them were obliterated as he wasn't quite accurate enough to land non-fatal blows on this many targets, but Ichigo didn't fault him for that. The Shinigami-Quincy hybrid simply followed up and purified all the wounded Hollows quickly with Hado and strikes from his Asauchi.

Rukia herself arrived in front of the Menos just as it fully stepped out of the tear between dimensions.

She slashed into the mask of the Menos, but it barely scratched it. The mask was too thick.

'_It's tough! I won't be able to cut it like this,'_ she thought.

The Menos' tongue shot out and tried to grab Rukia but she flashed away.

A quick incantation later, she fired a fully powered Raikouhou at the Menos.

The beam this time, now that she was in her Shinigami form, was a pillar of light larger than a building, and it smashed into the black mass of the Menos with great force.

The whole Menos was knocked back, and fell down, a large gorge of white revealed where the Raikoukou burned the black outer cloth of the Menos away.

When the Menos hit the ground, the whole area shook like a small earthquake.

The Menos roared in rage, then from its position lying on the ground, it's head lifted and it gathered a huge amount of spirit energy.

At this mouth, a ball of red light began to form.

Ichigo turned to see it and a sliver of fear ran through him.

It was even larger than Rukia's Raikouhou and she couldn't avoid it in time.

"Rukia!" Ichigo shouted in worry as the Cero engulfed her.

When it was over, Rukia landed back on the ground near Ichigo with slightly singed clothes, kneeling on one knee, casting healing Kido on herself.

"Ugh…I underestimated its power. My Enkosen wasn't enough to fully block the Cero," she said.

Ichigo ran over to inspect her.

"Don't worry, Ichigo, I'm fine. I'll finish healing in a few seconds, then I'll finish off this Menos."

"Are you sure? We got most of the small fry already, so we can help," said Ichigo.

"I can handle it," said Rukia, standing back up.

The Menos also got up and towered over them again. Then its tongue went out and it sucked with its mouth. All of the wounded Hollows that Ichigo hadn't managed to purify yet was sucked into its mouth and crunched into pieces.

"It's eating other Hollows?! No, it's healing itself with their spirit pressure too!" Uryu shouted with careful observation.

"It doesn't matter. I'll defeat it with my next move," said Rukia.

'_Her spirit pressure is still rising! Is this Lieutenant Captain level?'_ Saido watched these people fight with a disbelieving expression, and realized that he was far out of his league here. He was so glad he got out of taking the second mission to apprehend the Kuchiki princess.

With a flourish, Rukia turned her Zanpaktou, and a white ribbon emerged from the hilt, tracing a circle.

"_Dance, Sode no Shirayuki!_"

A flash of light and wind burst from Rukia's position, as her spirit pressure rose dramatically.

When it was over, her Zanpaktou had become a beautiful pure white, and a cold air emanated from her.

The Menos began to power up another Cero when it was done eating all the other Hollows, but Rukia disappeared in a flash step, and reappeared just underneath it where its legs were, crouching with her sword held to the side.

"First Dance, White Moon," she intoned. A large circle had been traced on the ground around the Menos Grande.

Sheer cold began to freeze the ground, and the Menos roared in outrage. It turned its mask down and prepared to fire the Cero, but then it was flash frozen by a pillar of ice that reached the heavens.

Within seconds, the pillar of ice shattered into pieces that shattered again into yet smaller pieces, and the body of the Menos Grande shattered along with it.

Far away, Urahara observed the proceedings with a sharp eye. "It seems we weren't needed after all," he said, before turning to leave. His assistants followed, Tessai smacking Jinta when he complained.

When Rukia and Ichigo went back to check on Uryu and their friends, Saido was already long gone.

O O O

"What were you thinking, Kisuke? A Menos is too much, too soon!" Yoruichi said while standing on Urahara's desk.

The former Division 12 captain held up his hands in a gesture of innocence while sitting on his chair behind the desk, looking over data collected that day. "That wasn't me, Yoruichi. The bait wasn't supposed to attract a Menos. Although, it was arguably not enough. After all, a soul's spirit pressure grows the fastest when they're facing death, and Rukia took care it without much trouble."

"Oh really? And you didn't predict that the Menos Grande would be attracted by their spirit pressures released during the battle?"

"I really didn't. You know it's very rare to see Menos Grande in the Human World. Rather, if I had to guess, I would suspect Aizen having a hand in it."

"I still think it would have been better to approach them directly about training. We were going to do that anyway, why not just start a little earlier instead of waiting until they need us?"

"It's not that simple Yoruichi. Ichigo has been training well with Rukia and the Quincy boy, and Rukia's hiding the return of her powers. Until they are clearly threatened by Soul Society and unable to survive on their own, what reason do they have to accept training from suspicious characters like us?" Urahara shook his head. Then he continued.

"More importantly, by using Hollows, we were able to see that Rukia is indeed growing quickly as I suspected…but I also wanted to find out what's going on with Ichigo's powers. When a soul releases spirit pressure, some of it returns and brings traces of surrounding spirit pressure with it. Those traces can stimulate the soul's own spirit pressure. Given that Ichigo inherited the Hollow that infected Masaki-chan, the Hollow spirit pressures should have stimulated the Hollow inside him, which should have interfered with his Quincy powers. Masaki-chan's Quincy powers were crippled back when Isshin was suppressing the Hollow for her, and she was still weakened even when only residual Hollow spirit pressure was left after she gave birth to Ichigo. As you reported from observing his recent training, Ichigo has been struggling much more with his Quincy powers than a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to understand if the Hollow was acting up and causing problems for him."

Yoruichi listened while Urahara seemed to ramble on, lost in his thoughts and no longer paying attention to her.

"…by stimulating him with Hollow spirit pressure, I wanted to see the direct evidence of his Hollow interfering with his Quincy powers. However, it was unfortunately inconclusive. While the fact that he only used Shinigami powers further supports the hypothesis, it's also possible that he deliberately chose not to use Quincy techniques as the threat wasn't large enough. When Ichigo suddenly started using Quincy techniques a few weeks ago, I hoped he might be different from Masaki-chan, having been born with the Hollow inside him, and also having Shinigami spirit pressure of his own. In the ideal case, if he was unaffected by the Hollow, then we could consider removing Isshin's seal. But now that he is struggling with his Quincy powers too, his future development will be very tricky. Is it better for him to continue developing Quincy powers in the hopes that he can keep the Hollow suppressed, and keep Isshin's powers tied down? Or let him develop his Shinigami powers, which will inevitably draw out the Hollow inside due to the Hollowfication process? Is it even possible to suppress his Quincy side instead?"

Urahara then grabbed a piece of paper and started drawing diagrams and notes.

"I once thought that Quincies were opposite to Shinigami, while Hollows were opposite to Humans. That was the theory behind Isshin's gigai, using his Shinigami powers cancel out suppress Masaki's Quincy nature, while using the human part to suppress the Hollow, bringing them both to a neutral, powerless state. But this is wrong. Masaki didn't lose all of her powers—she simply had trouble using them without harming herself because of the Hollow spirit pressure—and Isshin's Shinigami spirit pressure instead helped her suppress the Hollow. Now Ichigo is able to use Shinigami powers even as a Quincy, while the Hollow is suppressed by Isshin. The equation doesn't add up."

On the paper he drew a horizontal line, and added three labels: 死, 人, 虚, representing Shinigami, Human, and Hollow.

Below the Shinigami he wrote a Plus symbol, below the Human was Zero, and below the Hollow was a Minus symbol.

"It seems that Shinigami and Hollow are the true opposites, cancelling each other out, with Human being neutral as the origin point. Indeed, my mistake was lumping Humans together with Plus souls. In fact, Humans don't become Plus souls until after they die, and Shinigami cannot use much of their powers while in a Gigai. Rather than Plus and Human belonging to the same group, it's that Shinigami are just more Plus than standard Pluses, while humans are neutral. But just how do Quincies fit into this? Why do Quincy and Hollow spirit pressures destroy each other?"

He wrote the 滅 character far above the other characters. "Destroy…" He murmured, tapping his pen on the desk.

"The opposite of destruction is creation. But Plus is not creation, and neither is Minus. The Minus is trying to fill a void by consuming Plus, but neither create anything new. But if the Minus is trying to consume Plus, why does it destroy Quincy?"

Then his eyes widened as he repeated himself.

"…destroy Quincy? Quincies destroy?"

He stared at the paper, then drew an oval around the Shinigami, Human, and Hollow characters. Beside the oval, he wrote another 滅 symbol, then drew a bigger encapsulation over both it and the other oval which contained the three symbols for Shinigami, Human, and Hollow.

Finally, he drew an arrow pointed line between the two 滅 characters.

"Destruction and creation…the opposite of a Quincy is itself! The Spirit King creates, and his descendants destroy…When a Minus tries to consume a Quincy, it's not the Minus Hollow that destroys it, it's Quincy destroying Quincy, the Hollow is only a catalyst! This is a different kind of Soul Suicide. For Shinigami souls, the Hollowfication process disrupts the boundary between the soul and the outside world when the soul shifts too suddenly back and forth between Plus and Minus, causing the soul to lose cohesion as an independent entity. That Plus or Minus represents a state of being for the soul itself, the fullness of its 'heart'. But for a Quincy, Plus or Minus represents the degree which the soul accepts or rejects the Spirit King's 'creation'. The neutral Quincy can live as a human on the material world as part of creation, yet using its power of Destruction on 'creation' on a small scale. The Plus Quincy can additionally gain Shinigami powers, fully accepting the world's cycle of life and death for what it is. The Minus Quincy outright rejects the whole world, instinctively struggling against the Spirit King's domain of 'creation' with its own 'creation', which causes the Spirit King's power of Destruction to erase the weaker Quincy from their domain. Creation and Destruction are relative, it all depends on whose 'domain' is being created or destroyed!"

Yoruichi tried and failed to follow what he was talking about, then looked at the half-crazed, ecstatic expression on Kisuke's face.

She meowed like a real cat, which Kisuke ignored, still writing more and more notes until the paper was filled with arcane symbols and complicated equations.

When he pulled out more papers and started writing on those while cross-referencing various data points on his computer, she sighed and walked away.

O O O

**A/N: **The "struggle" that Ichigo has been having which Yoruichi saw while stalking him is because of the spirit particle scattering exercise. But Urahara doesn't know about that, so to them it just looks like he's suddenly relying more on Shinigami powers and having trouble with Quincy techniques he should have already mastered.

**Antex-The Legendary Zoroark**: Thanks. It's been fun getting back into this. You were the only one actually right on the mark about the bait, it being a combination of Urahara and Aizen.

**Murderleo38**: It is not possible to release the seal. As explained in this chapter, the seal comes from Urahara and Isshin. To break it, Ichigo would need to be strong enough to defeat Isshin's spirit pressure, or kill himself and allow himself to Hollowfy. I don't know why people keep assuming that Gesshokuro lied, when he never lied in canon, only hid or gave partial explanations.

**XXX Chaos Breaker XXX**: Fullbringers are canon, so they have a place. How big of a role, I'm not sure yet. Most likely it'll have to do with the first substitute Shinigami's story and the Tsunayashiro clan, but I've not actually read that part, only summaries.

**ZALAMBSAUCE**: He already has Shinigami power. A Zanpaktou isn't a requirement to be a Shinigami.

**LazyNekogami**: First of all...it's impossible for Auswahlen to work that way. Masaki was an Echt Quincy, so she wouldn't have been chosen. Furthermore, if she could have been chosen, then all her kids would have died as well. They didn't die, therefore Isshin's statement is false. Even if he believes it, it's just propaganda or a baseless assumption.

Yhwach specifically said that Uryu was the only survivor of his Auswahlen, which means that Ichigo, Karin, and Yuzu weren't targeted in the first place. All of them were in fact Echt Quincies, despite Masaki's marriage to a non-Quincy. Why is this? The answer lies in Katagiri's comment about retaining the purity of the Ishida's line, which would have been lost if Masaki had not been cured using the original Quincy procedure. There are 3 key points to note about her comment. Point A is that Urahara lied or didn't know that an alternate procedure existed for curing Masaki, which was only inaccessible because Souken couldn't be found at the time, and Ryuken's mom didn't know how to perform it. Urahara said specifically that Masaki could never go back to the way she was as a pure Quincy and would have to live as a human forever, which was false based on Katagiri's comment. Point B is that purity isn't only about breeding with non-Quincies, as the hollowfication process itself does something to affect the purity of Quincies. However, if that was all, then _both_ Ichigo and Masaki would have been taken by Auswahlen, not Masaki alone. Therefore, the "taint" must not have applied by the time Auswahlen was activated. Most likely because some time after Ichigo's birth and before Souken's death, Masaki had the Quincy procedure done to her to cure her, and Ichigo had never undergone serious Hollowfication because White was being suppressed the whole time, unlike Masaki who had temporarily formed a Hollow hole. This also means that breeding with Isshin did not cause the Kurosaki line to become impure, which is also supported by the fact that Ichigo could use Blut Vene instinctively with no training, something only Echt Quincies could do.

Secondly, there is no evidence whatsoever that Masaki had access to her powers until after Ichigo was born and White was transferred. For the purposes of this story though, Masaki was simply weakened.

As for fake Shikai and Bankai, being "weakened" is exactly what I'm describing, and Gesshokuro explained it the same way. Yumichika had a fake shikai that was produced by using a false name. Arguing about whether fully hollowfied Ichigo is "pure" or not requires a definition of what you consider "pure". It seems that I have a different definition from you. The Hollow _is_ the zanpaktou, same with its Bankai. You cannot prove anything about Ichigo's Shinigami powers by observing the Hollow using its own _Hollow_ techniques. Simply by being a Zanpaktou technique doesn't make it a Shinigami power. Gesshokuro is part of Zangetsu, and he uses Quincy powers. The same principle applies to White Zangetsu. A Zanpaktou is just an imprint of its wielder's spirit pressure. It is not intrinsically Shinigami. There weren't any Zanpaktous until they were invented, and they don't even need Shinigami souls to manufacture, seeing as White is made of many Hollow souls rather than Shinigami souls.

I actually wrote a 3000 word essay discussing the physics of Bleach and the above plus the nature of hybrids and spirit pressure in excruciating detail, and realized that this is pointless. Lol. I have an internally consistent theory which I am using for this story, which will be revealed in bits and pieces as they become relevant to the story, until the contents of that essay are no longer spoilers and I can publish it directly as a supplementary content. So I won't be arguing about this anymore.

**Death Lantern**: About Masaki, I disagree. See above for why. Yhwach never stole her powers, that was nothing more than propaganda or incorrect assumption by Urahara and Isshin. For FGT, yes that's a popular theory which is very relevant to this story.

**777torn777**: Haha, only if she gets a chance to explain herself.

**Kaiya Azure**: That's right. There are definitely hidden forces conspiring to make sure everything follows the script.

**Pikanet128**: Well, in the regular timeline, Ichigo didn't actually need an Asauchi until Zangetsu broke.

**zeynel**: Oh yeah. As Toshiro deduced in the chamber, Aizen killed the C46 even before the Ryoka invasion. His faked death came after. and his corpse was Kyoka Suigetsu itself. So there's no way he could use Kyoka Suigetsu's Shikai after he faked his death. How early exactly did he start giving out the orders? Who knows...

**deathshade37**: Thanks. Bleach has a lot of interesting stuff hidden beneath the surface, and this story is a way to explore all that. More will come soon.

Thanks to everyone else who reviewed!


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